Keep Your Eye on the Sun
On the same morning that we got free from the docks and rolled our flour barrels toward the Otter, my momma was sitting in Chatham, Canada, at her little kitchen table. “I looked up,” she told me later, “and plain as day, I saw you through my kitchen window. Three boys were playing in the street, laughing and running, and one of them was you. I said to myself, That is exactly what my Samuel looks like right now. And that's when I knew you were coming, sure as anything. In my mind, I knew.”
But we didn't know any of that.
As we got up real slow from the docks, the constable untied our hands and told us to get busy with our work, or he would find something worse for us to do. So Harrison put his hands next to mine on the flour barrel, and I could see all of his fingers trembling like leaves. And Ordee Lee set his big-knuckled hands on his flour barrel. And we started rolling those barrels down the dock.
Seemed like everyone had their eyes on us, watching. They stepped back to let us pass. “Parted like the Red Sea,” Lilly would have said. The soft thump of the barrels and the white birds calling overhead filled the air around us.
Walk as if you have the perfect right to do so. You slave or free?
Free.
Then walk like it. Walk.
I put my shoulders back a little. Lifted up my head and took a quick sideways glance at everything around us. I saw the big sailboats lining the docks, one after the other. And I saw people stopping in the middle of their work to stare at us. And in the spaces in between, I saw green-blue water just like Lilly had said, water that stretched all the way to the sky.
“Flour goes on the Otter, over there,” someone called out to us. We rolled the barrels up a long plank to a boat that was the size of a house. Maybe two houses.
“We free?” Ordee Lee whispered. “This mean we free?”
All around us, men tugged at curls of ropes and lines. The Otter swayed underneath our feet. Seemed like everything around us was being set free.
Me and Harrison and Ordee Lee stood where we were, not saying a word. Just stood on the deck and looked up, as if our eyes and mouths were stuck.
Over our heads, the canvas sails of the Otter unrolled like warm summer clouds. And if we could have seen our future unfolding in those big sails, like my momma saw the future in her mind, we would have known what was going to happen to each of us in freedom …
We would have known that Ordee Lee would become a blacksmith—the finest blacksmith in Chatham, Canada. He would call himself “Isaiah Moses” after his two sons. And although he would never see his family again, he would often bring us gifts of food and money—even a real horse once. “Can't ever give enough,” he would say. “For what Samuel done.”
When Harrison got to Canada, he would find ponds scattered like seeds through the forests and fields around Chatham. He would choose one of his own to sit beside, and he would fish, day after day, until we all took to running from him whenever he brought home another stringer of pond fish for supper. (If you ask anyone around Chatham today, they can still point you to Harrison's Pond, and it's always full offish right down to the very bottom.)
And when I got to Chatham, I would find my own momma sitting at her kitchen table waiting for us. She would have extra places set because she knew we were coming. “Today or tomorrow, or sometime …” And when we walked through the door of her house, we would hear, sure as the whole town— no, the whole country of Canaday—heard, that Harrison was her daddy, and I was her long-lost son.
Only person we never would have in freedom was Lilly. Lilly stayed with her children in the little Negro burying-ground on Master Hackler's land. “She's never gonna leave,” Harrison said. “ ‘Cause that's where her family is.” Each year, she would send a Christmas dollar to me, wrapped in a torn-out page from her Bible, and I saved all six of them.
But, truth is, we didn't know any of these things—not about Ordee Lee, or Harrison, or my momma, or Lilly, or what was going to happen to us in freedom at all—as we stood on the deck of the Otter that morning. We just stared at the white sails soaring in the endless morning sun.
“Samuel,” Harrison said, grinning at me. “We done it.”
He waved his arms, turning and spinning in the wind.
“Whoooeeee, Samuel,” he hollered and waved. “Look up. Look up at this beautiful free sky.”
Samuel and Harrison's Journey, 1859
Author's Note
The Underground Railroad is a familiar American story. It is a story filled with dramatic accounts of secret rooms, brave abolitionists, and midnight journeys. But sometimes the real heroes of the story—the runaways themselves—are left in the background. What did they think and feel as they tried to reach freedom? What was their journey like? Whom did the runaways trust and whom did they fear? This book grew from my wondering about these questions….
In my research, I learned that the Underground Railroad was not a clear, organized network that led runaways from the South to the North. Actually, the term referred to any safe routes or hiding places used by runaways—so there were hundreds, even thousands, of “underground railroads.”
Most runaways traveled just the way that Samuel and Harrison did— using whatever temporary hiding places or means of transportation they could find. As the number of actual railroad lines increased throughout the country in the 1850s, some runaways even hid on railroad cars when traveling from one place to another. They called this “riding the steam cars” or “going the faster way.”
I also discovered that runaways were not as helpless or ill prepared as they are sometimes portrayed. Historical records indicate that many slaves planned carefully for their journey. They brought provisions such as food and extra clothing with them. Since transportation and guides could cost money, some slaves saved for their escape, while others, like Samuel and Harrison, received money from individuals they met during their journey.
White abolitionists and sympathetic religious groups like the Quakers aided many runaways on the Underground Railroad. However, free African Americans played an equally important role. They kept runaways in their homes and settlements and served as guides, wagon drivers, and even decoys.
In fact, the character of the river man is based on the real-life story of a black Underground Railroad guide named John E Parker. Like the river man, John Parker was badly beaten as a young slave, and so he never traveled anywhere without a pistol in his pocket and a knife in his belt. During a fifteen-year period, he ferried more than four hundred runaways across the Ohio River, and a $1,000 reward was once offered for his capture. After the Civil War, he became a successful businessman in Ripley, Ohio, and patented several inventions.
I am often asked whether other parts of the novel are factual. The gray yarn that is sent as a sign? The baby buried below the church floor? Lung fever? Guides named Ham and Eggs?
The answer is yes. Most of the events and names used in this novel are real, but they come from many different sources. I discovered names like Ordee Lee and Ham and Eggs in old letters and records of the Underground Railroad. The character of Hetty Scott is based on a description I found in John Parker's autobiography. The heart-wrenching tale of Ordee Lee saving the locks of hair of his family comes from a slave's actual account. However, I adapted all of this material to fit into the story of Samuel and Harrison—so time periods and locations have often been changed.
One of the most memorable aspects of writing this book was taking a trip to northern Kentucky and southern Ohio in late summer. To be able to describe the Cornfield Bottoms and the Ohio River, I walked down to the river late at night to see what it looked like and how it sounded in the darkness. To be able to write about Samuel's mother, I stood on a street corner in Old Washington, Kentucky, where slaves were once auctioned. I even stayed in houses that had been in existence during the years of the Underground Railroad.
I chose the southern Ohio and northern Kentucky region for my setting since it had been a very active are
a for the Underground Railroad. I selected the year 1859 because Congress passed a national law called the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which affected everyone involved in the Underground Railroad. Severe penalties such as heavy fines and jail time awaited anyone—white or black—who helped or harbored runaway slaves anywhere in the United States after 1850.
The law also required people to return runaway slaves to their owners, even if the runaways were living in free states like Ohio. African Americans like August and Belle, who had papers to prove their freedom, were safe from capture even though their lives were sometimes restricted by local and state “black laws.” However, runaway slaves were only safe if they left the country and went to places like Canada or Mexico. That is why Samuel and Harrison had to journey all the way to Canada to be free in 1859.
So, if you visited Canada today, would you still find a peaceful place called Harrison's Pond? And is there a tumbledown farmhouse somewhere in Kentucky with an old burying-ground for slaves nearby?
Harrison's Pond and Blue Ash, Kentucky, are places in my imagination, but there are many other places to visit with solemn footsteps and remember. I hope that you will.
—Shelley Pearsall
Selected Bibliography
Coffin, Levi. Reminiscences of Levi Coffin. New York: Arno Press, 1968.
Lester, Julius. To Be a Slave. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1968.
McCline, John. Slavery in the Clover Bottoms: John McCline's Narrative of His Life During Slavery and the Civil War. Edited by Jan Furman. Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1998.
Parker, John R His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996.
Siebert, William H. Mysteries of Ohio's Underground Railroad. Columbus, Ohio: Long's College Book Company, 1951.
Still, William. The Underground Railroad. New York: Arno Press, 1968.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, which provided the initial time and support to write; Jan Ridgeway and Jackie Fink, who reviewed early drafts of the manuscript; and finally, the following young readers who offered their comments throughout the writing process: Jonathan Hartman, Whitney Butler, Alexandra Zelaski, Mark Levin, Patrick and Michael Vernon, and Meaghan Igel.
ALSO BY SHELLEY PEARSALL
Crooked River
It is the time when the leaves
are small on the trees
too small
for hiding
—Indian John
The year is 1812. A white trapper is murdered. And a young Chippewa Indian stands accused.
Captured and shackled in leg irons and chains, Indian John awaits his trial in a settler's loft. All the while, thirteen-year-old Rebecca Carver sleeps and cooks and cleans below, terrified by the captive Indian right in her home.
In a world of crude frontier justice, where evidence is often overlooked in favor of vengeance, Indian John struggles to make sense of the white man's court. His young lawyer faces the wrath of a settlement determined to see the Indian hang. And Rebecca must decide for herself what—and who—is right. At stake is a life.
From the award-winning author of Trouble Don't Last comes a fast-paced drama told in the alternating voices of Indian John and Rebecca Carver. Crooked River offers a probing look at prejudice, early American justice, and the true meaning of courage.
* “Outstanding …O'dell winner Pearsall…
brings a snapshot of history to life.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred
Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children's Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York
Text copyright © 2002 by Shelley Pearsall
Map copyright © 2002 by Kayley LeFaiver
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers.
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