Page 78 of Good Dirt

Refuge County

1873

W illis didn’t like the idea at all. His sons were heading west to the treacherous whaling grounds of the Pacific. And he feared for them. If they went north, their bark could be trapped in the Arctic ice. If they went west into the ocean, they would be perilously far from land. But his boys were men now, and they had made their choice.

Everything was supposed to have been better following the Civil War, but this thing they called the economy was toppling over like the mast of a ship fractured by a gale. Later, the experts who spent their time making proclamations on such matters would say the great fire in Boston, preceded by another in Chicago, had contributed to the dramatic situation. And there had been that terrible horse disease. It had hobbled transportation and brought orders for the Freeman wagons to a halt.

There was so much competition for work. Skilled colored craftsmen and workers were facing racial quotas, exclusion from craft unions, and other forms of discrimination. Massachusetts men were competing for work with new black migrants from the South and white newcomers from abroad. Feeling they had no other options, Willis’s boys decided to leave for San Francisco.

Willis, too, had done whatever he could to make do in his day. But he had sought every alternative to the whale hunting that he could. One run had been enough for him, and he had managed to stay clear of the whaleboats, that one time, remaining instead on the ship. There had been much work to do on deck. The repairing of harpoons and sails, the dreaded handling of the whale carcasses after a hunt. One sailor had lost his life, another his leg. When he could, Willis drew what he had seen, but he later learned that he could sell his artwork if it showed more of the triumph of the whaler and less of the grit and terror.

He’d heard stories, too, about what could happen to a colored man while traveling across the country. Harassment and violence. It felt as though things were getting worse than before. After the boys left, Willis and his wife fell into a silence that lasted for days. Then, one day, she called to Willis.

“Look,” she said.

It had just occurred to Aquinnah to look inside the stoneware jar, which had continued to occupy a space near the kitchen door all these years. She had reached into the jar and pulled out a new piece of paper. Their sons had left them a note, which she showed to Willis now.

“Our Dearest Father and Mother,” Willis read. “We pray, keep watch over one another and trust in the guidance of the North Star to bring us home to you before long. Your faithful sons, Edward Moses and Basil.” He nodded at Aquinnah. She read it to herself again, moving her lips silently, then folded the note and put it back in the jar, weighing it down with the small piece of wood marked with an X that had helped her parents to freedom.

Aquinnah remained crouched by the jar, one hand resting on the trail of leaves painted by her husband all those years ago. Neither of them could have foreseen exactly how the jar would take on new layers of significance in their lives, but Willis had understood from the start that it would be part of their family. And that piece of wood was now part of the jar’s story. She and Willis linked arms and stood together at the open door, turning their gaze to the west, as they would every morning and every evening, training their thoughts on their sons.