Daniel Webster Jackson & The Wrongway Railroad

by Robert Walker

  Daniel as Effram and his new ‘family’ stumbled out of the dense trees and thicket. Far ahead a strange light glowed. Daniel heard the slapping of the river. They'd reached the riverbank. Now they marched along the shore, always going toward the floating light ahead. Suddenly those in front of Daniel and Daisy stopped. Ahead, voices filtered back to them, and an uneasy feeling welled up among the slaves. Everyone began to fidget.

  Daniel near jumped out of his skin when he heard a great noise like a sick crow or ailing loon caught in a bear trap. "Kack-kacka-kaw-kaw-kaw! Kack-kacka-kaw- kaw-kaw!"

  Daniel realized though, that the noise was a signal that was now being answered by a bellowing Sheriff Brisbane. "Wack-wacka-waw-waw-waw-waw! Wack-wacka-waw- waw-waw-waw!" He sure must seem crazy to the slaves, Daniel thought.

  The slaves now looked to Icabod. Poor Ichabod could only shake his head and throw his hands up. Having never ridden on the freedom train before, he didn't know what was happening.

  In a moment, a floating light appeared and Major Splitshot's men herded everyone onto a great flatboat. Lem's torch lit the way. Daniel looked the flatboat over as it came his turn to step aboard. It was a large one with two cabins on deck, like the one he'd seen from the cave during the storm some nights back. It was like a raft that had become too big and had grown a rudder.

  The sheriff s men had run the giant raft up under a bluff and tied-to at some tree trunks, dropped a gangplank across the rocks and had waited in the fog for the group. When Daniel started across the wobbly gangplank with Daisy, she almost tumbled over into the shallows. The sheriff guided those ahead into the larger of the two cabins through a black hole of a doorway.

  Daniel caught Lem's boot in his backside.

  "Don't you never kick my boy, Effram, ever again!" Daisy hissed, staring down Lem's long gun as she told him off.

  "Come here, you, boy!" shouted Lem to Daniel.

  Daniel did as instructed.

  "Turn around," said Lem.

  Daniel turned around, and Lem kicked him squarely in the seat of the pants. Daniel was picking himself up off the deck when he heard Lem's grunt. He looked over his shoulder to see Lem splash into the water over the side. Daisy had sent him sailing overboard.

  Several of the other guards stood around Daisy now, their guns held just under her flaring nostrils. "Inside! Inside!" they hissed. The sheriff continued moving the slaves into the dark cabin.

  Daniel thought Lem was either pretty smart to pretend meanness so well, not wanting anyone to guess him an underground agent on the road, or he was one of those who worked the freedom road for money.

  Once everyone had entered the dimly lit cabin, the door was locked. Only one old, weak oil lamp burned, and it seemed to be swallowing up all the air. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, Daniel counted fifty or more people. The damp cabin reminded Daniel of being alone in Colonel Halverston's underground cavern with a single lamp in his hand.

  Daniel coughed on the stale air. Then he sat on the floor next to Daisy. Ichabod remained the only person standing. He moved about the other people who had already been on board when the Blainy party arrived. One man was almost hidden in deep shadows, and Daniel realized that his arms were over his head, held there by chains!

  No one else had chains on. The picture didn't sit right with what Daniel knew of Sheriff Brisbane's freedom operation. Why would they chain a man they were taking to Illinois and on to Canada?

  Daniel strained to see around Ichabod, who was cautiously asking the stranger, "Why they got you bound up in chains, mister? Why you the only one of us mistreated? What'd you do to deserve this?"

  "My name is George," the man answered. "And you are Ichabod Penrose, more lately Ichabod Blainy—minister, consoler, healer of your people."

  "My Lord, it's you, George! It really is you!"

  "My mother, is she with you?" asked George as Daisy pushed past Daniel.

  Ichabod turned to Daisy, saying, "Daisy, it's your George. It's your boy!"

  "Lord, is it true?" Daisy replied, now reaching the broken man and hugging him.

  "Momma, it's me, George. It's true. I come back to find you."

  "You done that much," said Ichabod.

  "Blessed be to Jesus, it is you, George!" cried Daisy, and then she added, "What did those evil mens do to you, son!"

  Daniel now knew that George Penrose, Daisy's son, was none other than George Penny, the runaway slave catcher! Daniel inched back into the darkness, trying to figure out what had happened.

  At the same instant, everyone else on the barge, seeing how Daisy and her son had been reunited, began to search the cabin, calling out names and asking after lost loved ones. One female voice asked over the noise, "Anybody here know my momma? Her name be Miss-ress Dooley, Mary Dooley."

  A chorus of other questions followed. "Anyone know Jasper Gibbs?"

  "May Tyler?"

  "Tip Walker?"

  "Israel Horton?"

  "Holly Masters?"

  Answers came back in shakes of the head and grunts of no. Persistent, another man asked, "My brother. Levin, he be here?"

  Aunt Rea lives on a farm near-bouts here someplace," came another woman's voice in the dark. "Used so to love my Aunt Rea, so much it hurt. Fine cook she was. Wilmott be her slave name."

  Daniel's heart sank as the slaves began to call out news of their relatives in hopes of reunion. Next they tried to match people by locales, trying to use geography. "Anyone from around St. Louis way?" Some found each other and spoke quietly together. Others shut down. Some cried. Still others continued calling out more names of towns, rivers, farms, former masters until the search for common ground died.

  Now, Daniel had another secret to keep from Daisy. He felt that knowing that her son had grown up to become a bounty hunter of runaway slaves would surely kill her.

  TWELVE

  ABOARD THE WRONGWAY RAILWAY

  "I could have made for Wisconsin and then on to Canada, but I stopped on the Illinois side and sank my canoe," George was telling Daisy, Ichabod, a wide-eyed Sissy and a number of others gathered around him as the flatboat moved swiftly and surely over the water now. The keelboat now had found deep water. As George told of his escape from slavery, his mother dabbed at his wounds, whimpering and muttering at what she saw.

  "I climbed that hill across from Hannibal, Momma, the one you always pointed at when we'd go by there on the trading boat Mr. Penrose run in at Hannibal. Remember how you told me there was a man lived on that north point on the ledge, where he put out a light every night for runaways?"

  "I only told a story that was passed from mouth to mouth. It was more hope than truth, son."

  "But it proved true, Momma," he replied. "Take a good look at my boots. They were special made for me by Mr. John Fairfield, the man who owns that house on the hill." Daniel watched as the others drank in all of George's stories, and he again noticed the man's smooth ochre skin, the point of his nose, high cheekbones and keen eyes, just as alert as his dog's. Daniel wondered for a moment what had become of Sam.

  "Who is this Fairfield?" asked Ichabod, who had examined George's boots, having slipped the left one off, searching out how it helped his clubfoot.

  "John Fairfield has helped more runaways on the Underground Railroad than any man in these parts, Ichabod."

  "You mean he's a slave stealer?"

  "No, an abolitionist."

  "Abo-who-linist?" asked Daisy.

  "Abolitionist, momma. A man who don't believe in slavery no more than in drowning a dog, don't believe in slavery of no kind, nowhere on earth, a man who is in a war to abolish all slavery in the United States. Mr. Fairfield says the Constitution of the United States says every person is supposed to be free. Says that's what the country was made for in the first place."

  Ichabod shook his head, saying, "But Missouri law says abolition is against the law."

  "They passed a bad law in Congress," he explained, "called the Fugitive Slave Act, part of a big compromise t
o keep it all from coming down to a war between North and South, part of the Missouri Compromise. But Mr. Fairfield and a lot of others like him say there ain't no compromising with sin and the Devil, and that slavery is the work of sinners and Satan working through men."

  "Then Missouri law...Missouri Compromise laws, they go against the law the country was founded on?" asked Daniel, having listened intently to George's explanation.

  George stared for a moment at Daniel as if trying to decide who he was, but then he quickly added, "That's right, boy. Mr. Fairfield believes the Fugitive Slave Law goes against the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and Christian charity—all the principles that made America."

  "That's mighty fine specifying," said one powerful- looking black man who'd inched closer to hear it all, "but it don't get us free, brother." This man wasn't a Blainy slave but had taken a beating himself and had come to the barge with another group.

  George ignored the other man's glare, and added, "Mr. Fairfield says the wrongful law will have a good result, because no man can straddle the fence no more, because no one who holds strong beliefs about freedom can abide all the compromising and bargaining that Congress has been doing. No man worth his salt can compromise with slavery, Mr. Fairfield says."

  "Mr. Fairfield says, Mr. Fairfield thinks..." mocked the big man standing over George now, his teeth set. "So where's all the white Mr. Fairfield now? What good are they to us? We be all sold South into hell!"

  "I got a plan," muttered George.

  The other man only laughed. "You? You with yourself all chained up, you got a plan?" He sauntered off to tell the joke to his friends. Daniel heard one of them call him Grady.

  "How come you to stop in Illinois and not go clean on to Canada, son?" asked Daisy.

  "Cold in Canada, Momma," joked George, "besides, I saw a chance to learn the ways of the road with Mr. Fairfield and his sons. There's no end to the knowledge in the man."

  "The road?" asked Sissy, whose eyes never seemed to leave George.

  "The Underground Railroad, girl. Business on it is higher now than at any other time, thanks again to the Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress in 1850. Riled a lot of people for the government muckety-mucks in Washington to tell them they had to return a runaway slave to his master, no matter if he is on free soil or not. In a backward way, we kinda got the law on our side this time, popular opinion being so against it and all."

  "Who turn't you in, son?" asked Daisy, as if she would kill whoever it had been.

  "How'd they catch you?" asked Ichabod.

  "Is the major taking you back to Massa Penrose, George?" asked Sissy.

  "Major? What major? Who's the major?" he replied, confused.

  Ichabod explained how they came to be on the barge, about how Blainy had sold them all to a Major Splitshot. Daniel bit his lower lip, deciding it high time he do some explaining of his own by exposing the truth. "The major ain't no major but a sheriff," he pronounced.

  Daisy stared at Daniel, asking, "What you saying, Effram?"

  "Sheriff?" asked Ichabod.

  "Sheriff of Hannibal," said George, helping Daniel out, winking at him to let him know his disguise hadn't fooled him.

  "And I got something else to tell you, Daisy, Mrs. Penrose."

  "I know you do, honey," said Daisy. "Knowed it for some time, just after seeing you put that turkey on the table. Didn't have sense enough to put it before the master. No black boy would ever make that mistake."

  "Then you know?" asked Daniel, his mouth hanging open.

  Ichabod said with sudden revelation, "This boy's white!"

  Sissy stared, amazed, saying, "Effram, you ought be ashamed. You do this all the time? Dress up Black, pass yourself off as a slave to be fed?"

  "No'm, not a lot, and my name's not Effram but Daniel, Daniel Webster Jackson, and I got good news for you, too. This here ain't an auction block situation you all are in, but I have it on good authority that Sheriff Brisbane is running you all north, north to freedom, and this here is a freedom train boat."

  "That don't figure right, Daniel," said George. "It was Sheriff Brisbane who beat me near unconscious and locked me up here. Told me straight out he was going to hide the fact of my clubfoot and my freedom papers from the auctioneer in St. Louis and get plenty of money on me. Said if I didn't hold my tongue at the sale, he'd cut it out."

  "I don't understand the sheriff at all, George." Daniel told the story of how Brisbane had helped the runaways who had fled through Daniel's camp, "Helped those runaways just like Old Billy and Colonel Halverston did. I saw it with my own eyes! He's an agent on the road, just like...like..."

  "Like I am?" asked George. "Daniel, you been turned around and wrong about me all this time, and now you got turned around and wrong about the sheriff."

  "You're an Underground Railroad agent?"

  "I am."

  "And the sheriff ain't?"

  "Look around you, Daniel. He's helped himself to a lot of other people's slaves in one way or another, but not so's he can help anyone but himself. I know how a Railroad line heading north is run, know every line from this area and which way it goes and how it's handled and who's behind it. Knew about Old Billy's operation, didn't I?"

  "Yeah, but—"

  "Been with Mr. Fairfield for near ten years now, and we never got a lick of help from the law in Missouri nor Hannibal. If you think on it for a minute, Daniel, you'll realize this boat ain't pointed north."

  Daniel gave this serious thought and feeling. George's right. The speed at which we're moving tells the story. The lumbering barge's being swept south on the current.

  "Hear any grunting, cursing or fighting outside on deck?" asked George.

  Again George was right. If Brisbane's gunmen had turned into oarsmen, heading against the current, they'd be sweating and cursing the river by now for sure, but not so much as a footfall could be heard beyond the cabin walls. The only sound against the barge remained the river itself, pushing it easily downstream. "Downriver," Daniel said in a near shout. "We're moving too easy, too fast and silent."

  George and Daniel's discussion had gathered a large crowd around them. The man named Grady and a friend he called Eben stood with fiery eyes, listening to every word. Daniel now recognized Grady and Eben as two of the slaves who'd run through his camp the other night. The one called Eben had been their leader, the man who had given over his trust to Sheriff Brisbane when the others had wanted to bolt in another direction.

  "He must have quite a counter-Railroad running," said George.

  "Counter-Railroad?" asked Daniel.

  "An unofficial Underground Railroad, but one running south instead of north to freedom," George explained, "a wrongway Railway! Going farther south."

  "But why ?"

  "Money, of course."

  Daniel shook with the thought. George said, "Sheriff said he could get five hundred dollar easy for me. Told me so when he caught me by surprise again. Didn't want to hear about trouble with my clubfoot anymore, not seeing how far I'd come on it."

  "I can't believe the sheriff is so low-down," said Daniel.

  "Greed, Daniel."

  This didn't soothe Daniel's feelings.

  "Mr. Fairfield knew this kinda thing was going on hereabouts for years, but he couldn't find out how it was done or who was behind it. Now I know, but I can't get word to Mr. Fairfield. Brisbane would be put away for life if he got caught slave snatching. He'd do anything to keep a witness like you from turning him in. That's why you have to keep to your disguise, Daniel."

  “But I can't stay a Blainy slave! I'd be sold down river like...like..."

  "Like the rest of us?" asked Sissy beside him, bitterness in her voice, as though she was glad to see a white person—any white—in this predicament.

  "You have to stay one of us, child, until we can figure a way to get you free without them bad men knowing," said Daisy, a warm hand on his shoulder. "Don't you worry, honey, we'll find a way. George'll think up a way, won't you, Georg
e?"

  George shrugged, causing his chains to clink, and no one said anything for a long moment. Finally. Daniel asked George, "Is Judge Hatcher all mixed up in this counter-Railroad, George?"

  "No. I'm pretty certain he doesn't know what his sheriff's been up to. Sherrif knows he can get away with it. Not so hard to make up your own laws when the laws the government makes are so conflicting. Brisbane was likely certain when he began his operation, which must be six or eight year ago, that he'd one day lose his sheriff’s badge. He wanted to use his time well, so he come up with this wrongway railway of his."

  "Turned his office to bad," added Ichabod, shaking his head.

  George replied, "Law's bad anyway in a slave state, Mr. Ichabod."

  Daniel thought for the first time how his home state must be looked upon by the slaves imprisoned in it. He'd never thought of it as a slave state before, but he certainly felt the weight of its being a slave state now. "So you ain't really no runaway catcher, then, Mr. Penny, Mr. Penrose," began Daniel. "That was only your disguise so you could find your mother again."

  "Penny is my chosen name, Daniel. Don't want to go by a slave name forced on me ever again. But yeah, you're right. I was out to catch runaways, but only so as to help them, any way I could."

  "Took a lot of bravery to come back to these parts," commented Ichabod.

  "Mr. Fairfield knew I wanted to find my momma, but his operation couldn't locate her until lately; come up with the name Blainy. I had worked for years in the files, watching, waiting, doing my work for the Fairfields. I become real good at writing up freedom papers to make them look authentic. Did my work at his wood mill which doubles for a hiding place on the real Underground Railroad. Then Mr. Fairfield learned how Penrose sold you all to Blainy. I then and there made up a batch of freedom papers for myself and for fifty others. I even signed the governor's signature better than he did. I done the same for hundreds of runaways come through the mill. I finally couldn't sit back no more, watching operation after operation succeed, and slaves going through all the time and not knowing how my own momma was fending. So I made my move."