At this, Hiram Craig stood up and pushed past shoulders and legs to come forward. He took Ruth’s right hand and put his Bible in it, open to Matthew.
Ruth said, “Well, I thank you, Mister Craig, but I can’t read.” Her face was set and stern. “In that Brandywine poorhouse I never got schooling up to the day I was brought to the Dickinsons as a servant. Then there were five children to raise. They lost their mama, though I didn’t care so much about that or their feelings. Jemima was not but two years old and I was a child myself and I did not love her. When she climbed onto her papa’s knee, I was even bitter. It was myself who wanted to be loved. I had neither mama nor papa, you see. And some time after that, we came here to Jonesville before it had a name or anything to it. There were no houses yet except for Mister and Missus Jones, who had already built.” Ruth nodded at the coffin. “Her father being then in search for a place where his children could be raised with neighbourly love, the wagon was stopped just three miles up this road. And soon there were neighbours enough.” She paused, then said, “and maybe none of us can be blamed for one lost sheep in our pasture, being so busy as we must have been. But I think God must have a mean streak, though, if He made us in His image, since we showed Jemima no pity.” Seeing shocked expressions all around, Ruth took the lid of the coffin off and dropped it on the floor. “Unless we invented meanness just in order to entertain our own selves. What does it say in here?” she waved Hiram Craig’s heavy Bible but paid no mind to the page. “It says, He looked for some to have pity on Him, but there was no man, neither found He any to comfort. They gave Him gall to eat. And when he was thirsty they gave Him vinegar to drink. And so it was with us.” She looked over at Isaac. She took a deep breath and looked into the coffin. “Jemima, I know your angel will see the face of our Father.”
Under the tabernacle roof there was utter quiet.
Ruth handed the Bible to Missus Sharpe, who handed it down the line of seated neighbours to Mister Craig. Then she went back to her bench.
Daniel was staring at his wife in astonishment. Then he got up and began his slow advance. By the coffin there was a small hammer and a pile of wooden pegs on the bench. He took up the hammer and leaned down for the lid, but the pain in his shoulder stopped him and he stood perplexed. Then he looked to Isaac, his eldest son, and held out the hammer with a small shrug of apology for what he was unable to do for himself.
Louisville Intelligencer
Fifty dollars Reward. RAN AWAY from the subscriber, a Boy, about 15 years in age, straight up about five feet nine wearing yellow shoes bound and lined, trowsers, sometimes a top hat, green on the underside any person who will secure him so that I may lay hold of him shall be reimbursed every expence, and a generous reward from R Fox. Jonesville, Virginia, Lee County, Sep 20. 1815 This one is required for payment of a wager.
Like those who had gone before and those who would come after, Bett walked. Travel by night. Beware of dogs. Beware of fast water and sucking sand. In the best situations, where a traveller could read, there were no written signs. There might be a tree drawn over waves on a card in a window. A quilt hanging by one peg on a laundry line. In the absence of such signals, the North Star was the only guide. Her head wrapped in a scarf as she set out, Bett wore Ruth’s given boots and woollen jacket.
As always, she carried her cloth medicine bag as well as the soft woven bag in which to collect mushrooms and plants. She had packed hickory nuts and sunflower seeds and there was a dented flask. Years before, she had concocted a strap for the bags that fit across her shoulders so that each lay more or less flat on her back, leaving her hands free to forage. She had no books, only the stories of a lifetime. When she woke in the afternoon, after a long morning sleep, she would search ground and trees and bushes for edibles and give herself one pleasant memory each day, since regret would slow her pace. She would pull up a clump of yarrow, to make her see what she must see. Mandrake. Poppy. Comfrey. Chamomile. Even the tansy is useful, if given with knowledge. She thought of Mary. Their need of each other for years. It felt as strange to her as the clothes on her back.
This was a country not of kills, or even creeks, but of runs; and she came down the valley between steep ridges. She went past a field where a man was standing in his wagon, driving a team of horses, and she hid behind a bush and waited until he had gone. Home for supper, as it was night. The valley was green and ancient. Up ahead was a tiny cabin with a stone chimney, smoke on the rise. Wondering if Bry might have passed, she wanted to stop. The porch railings were topped with unflowered plants in pots that gave off the scent of geraniums, and she thought of picking some leaves for her bag, but it has been said often enough that stolen herbs make a patient sicken. She passed two narrow houses and on the porch of one was a rocking chair. Perhaps this was the edge of Rosehill. She turned away from the road then, looking for shelter cut out of the forest. In the north, we will have sheep and a spinning wheel, she said to herself. Washing our lambs will make for an occasion, after which Bry will sheer them and I will twist and wind the clean wool as I learned from my first mistress. I will make Bry a coat to keep him winter warm. I will dye it whatever colour he chooses. We will have corn planted out in rows and we will top it while it is green, cutting the stalk above the ear to make winter feed for our flock of sheep. She quickened her pace.
In the woods, she met a man and boy. The boy had walked from North Carolina. The man from a near plantation. They were expecting a wagon to come along, an abolitionist, and soon the three vagabonds were crossing a field together. It was a cool night and Bett put her hand on the boy’s warm shoulder, as if she needed aid. She leaned against him and he allowed this and she told him that her son had set his face toward the north and she was going after him.
The man, who was old, chanted, “And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.”
The boy said, “What that about?”
The old man whistled. “How the children of Israel were delivered out of bondage. Ain’t you know it?”
In the dimness of moonlight, the boy looked sullen, as if a secret had been kept from him.
“What people rised you up?” the old man asked.
The boy kicked at the ground, but Bett pressed against his shoulder with her weight, remembering the feel and smell of her own lean son. The boy said excitedly, “I know what happened. It was your boy who climbed up in the masta’s house and chop him up. That was your boy with the axe.”
“Not so,” Bett answered. “He has no guilt, only a broken heart to carry where he goes.” She thought back on the visits Isaac had made to the quarters, telling Bry and the others about the escaped slaves who had formed a regiment in Canada. “To fight us,” he had said with a laugh. “And who can blame them?” She might mention this to the boy, who was offering his support but would he believe her? Then something else came to her mind and it was terrible: not wanting to dishearten him, she had not told Bry that Jemima was dead. What if he had waited nearby, hoping to see her? He’d be found in a matter of hours by the dogs. She put more weight on the boy’s firm shoulder.
The three made little noise as they continued across small holdings in the dark. Before dawn they were met by a wagon. The driver was wrapped in cloth the colour of night and wearing a broad-brimmed hat. He gave a birdcall. “This be him,” said the old man, but the boy was not sure. “This the one we was told to espec,” the old man insisted.
The boy stood behind a tree as if that way he would not be seen, although the tree was small. The old man reached out for Bett and she was convinced, since she had no real belief in the dangers she faced, but the boy was untrusting and the old man stayed behind with him, electing to walk on to the next station, some kind of mill. From her whispered conversations in the quarters of various farms, Bett knew there were people who aided runaway slaves, but how were they found? Who had summoned this wagon with its Quaker driver? The wagon had a shallow spac
e under its floor and she squeezed herself into it, lying face down with five bags of freshly ground wheat flour on the wagon bed above her. Freight to be delivered in due time. She could not turn or shift. Perhaps such people as the driver, she thought, need to make the task seem more dangerous than it is. She had not been much in the world. But were there ears listening? Surely there was no sheriff waiting for her at the next crossroads. There were men who suffered boredom, who desired conspiracy and importance, that much she knew after living with Eb and Rafe Fox. There were men who lived on the bounties paid for runaway slaves.
Down at the bend in the bottom of the road, a woman was hanging clothes on a line. Bett could see her through a hole in the wagon’s side. She had travelled among just such people, healing them. Later, at another place, a man swung a scythe. When they passed a white woman casting seeds from a pail, the image of Ruth came to her – Ruth had sown seeds with a waxing moon, had put hair in the trench when she planted her beans, and moved a healthy chamomile into any area of plants that were not thriving. Ruth had known that cabbages profited by being near sage or mint, that garlic repelled pests and aided the growth of tomatoes and asparagus. How, Bett had asked once in passing, did Ruth know these things? From my fine upbringing, Ruth had said, telling Bett that she had been leased out to the Dickinsons like a farm animal. Then she added, “Though I was sure never lowly as a slave.”
Mary hurried the horse in what was becoming darkness and remembered the colour or no colour of her skin, which would make her journey easier than Bett’s. The roads were full of men who made it their business to check on the movements of anyone who wasn’t white. Anyone else must have a pass clearly written and signed. She clucked at her horse. Twelve miles north of Jonesville she saw a small store. In its dark window was propped a card with a drawing of trees on water.
Feeling large and ungainly, Mary rang the bell, peering through a tiny circle of glass in the door, clutching the dark baby close and pulling at her hat, wanting to look respectable. An elderly man in a dressing gown stepped out of a room at the back and came to the door.
“My baby,” Mary gestured at the bundle pressed against her. “I wonder if you could spare a cup of milk.” She stepped inside.
While the storekeeper went to his root cellar, she glanced around in the dark, seeing that she had come to a place with provisions. On a back shelf there were three loaves, one brown and two white. When he returned, she asked the storekeeper the price of a loaf, scanning the place for something more to take with her. Pickles. Onions. Pig’s feet. “I see you have cheese,” she said gratefully and moved to a chest in the corner as if through deep water. She had eaten nothing since the day before, nothing since Rafe had come to collect her with his cart. Your sister is labouring. It seemed years ago that she had been so informed. Passing a counter, she heard the sound of ripping fabric. A nail.
The old storekeeper watched her examine her skirt. Was he taking note of her features, studying her through his small spectacles? “I am looking for a runaway,” she said boldly. “Also her son. To take them to safety.” The storekeeper nodded. Then, as if he could not communicate in words, he wrote a number on a loose piece of paper.
Mary saw that it was only a bill and paid what he asked. “What does it mean? The picture of trees on water.”
“It indicates a mill, missus.”
“I saw no logging in these parts.”
“Flour mill, missus, just up the road. You could try for your runaways there.”
Mary went back to her horse and cart and went the way he had indicated. The horse moved along the black road through black trees and Mary tore off a piece of bread and a wedge of cheese, letting go of the reins and leaning back to pick up the baby, who had begun to fuss against her dress. She had poured the milk into a clean gourd and now put some into the tiny clay vessel with a spout that had been used to feed Joseph. It was part of the bundle Ruth had given her for the baby’s care. She fed the baby and chewed on her own cold meal, remembering the time she and Bett had driven through a snowstorm and been stranded late at night. They had been coming home from the Clarke plantation and finally curled as one under a blanket so that they collected the biting frost in one set of lungs and released it into the other. They had no wick for the lamp they had brought but Bett drew Mary’s hands into her own and then wept until the tears froze on her face, describing her longing for Bry. Mary had wondered if her own longing was different. How did it feel to be a mother in that bodily way?
When she made out a sign for the Ressler Mill and a small light behind one of two windows, she reined in the horse and stepped out of the cart again. Through the lit window, she saw the miller wipe his hands on an apron before he came to the door. “I am seeking a boy and his mother. They might not be travelling together.”
He shook his head. “I’ll see to your horse,” he said, leading the way through the mill without comment, as if strange women often came to his door. “I’ll bring supper,” he said, and Mary meant to say that she had eaten in her cart, but the thought of warm food made her hungry again.
In the moonlight that poured silvery through the window of the back room, she made out the shapes of a chair and table. Bed. She could not discern the colours of the quilt, but she felt its rough texture when she put the baby down on it. Well fed, the little one lifted her fists and blew bubbles out of her thumb-wide mouth. Mary unbuttoned her boots and stepped out of them. One of her stockings had ripped, but that could be mended along with the skirt that had been torn by the nail. She must keep up the appearance of self-regard, although she had none left to draw upon. A chamber pot, a pitcher of water, a washbowl. Mary supposed this was as fine a room as a runaway slave would encounter, though certainly there were places that were finer, hotels that served the tobacco merchants and slave merchants and cotton buyers. There were places with pretty settees and carpets and chandeliers, although Bett would never see them.
When the miller tapped at her door and she opened it, she saw that the light had been put out in the granary. She received the bowl of warm milk and a piece of bread from his hands and remembered to say, “I thank you.” She noticed a cold sore at the corner of his lip. “A concoction of sage, alum, and sugar will heal that sore,” she said.
Her benefactor answered that he was much obliged.
By afternoon they had not stopped, not even slowed, and the road was dry and dusty so that Bett choked on it. “Mister!” she called up, but the road went mildly on and the driver did not seem to hear. Were there patrols? Everything would be wild in Kentucky but a certain lawlessness might make travelling easier. One day, when there was a time for it, she must think over how all of this had come about, how Bry had run for one reason and she for another, and how the newborn child was in the in-between place of a lost soul.
The wagon bumped along and Bett tried for a little comfort but could not find it, mashed in as she was and remembering a game she had played as a child. A girl – what was her name – hiding in a closet. Always so easily found. Was Bry like that? Would he betray himself with noise or sudden movement? Would he build a fire when he shouldn’t? Bett thought of the night that little girl had disappeared and how for some time uncounted she had sat in her grandmother’s kitchen, making herself learn not to care. And when she was sent to Jester Fox, never a dint was made in that shield of uncaring until Mary took her in. Then it was all as it might once have been, having a friend until that, too, came to an end. Betrayal after betrayal. And now she would never see Mary again.
“Whatcha got there in them bags?” Sudden men, shouting.
The wagon slowed and Bett clung to the boards. There was a commotion of wheeling, circling horses, neighing, clattering hooves on the stones of the road. Through the small hole in the wagon’s side she could see the horses’ legs and then the legs of the men dismounting, boots to the ground. She heard them threaten her driver, and knew he would give in to cowardice and turn her over because of the shouting and yelling. He was on his knees. She coul
d see his head bent down in its hat, until he was swallowed up by the horses and she was a stick trying not to break.
“Two runaways reported.” A deep voice was making words to explain.
“A witch doctor and her savage son.” This voice was quieter, almost apologetic. But they were rough with the old driver now, pushing him so that he fell against his wagon right close to her face.
“You wouldna be one a them abolishioners, wouldye?”
“Bleedin hearts?” Someone was climbing on the wagon, rocking it hard. “Let’s us take a look.”
“This un’s mine if he’s in a flour bag.”
“Pokem first. Makem bleed.”
The driver made no resistance as they began their search and Bett did not let herself breathe. Time by time she took her thoughts somewhere else to calm herself. She tried to think of her grandmother young and of herself as nothing and she heard her grandmother’s voice and smelled drying plants. She felt better for it, but her arms were bent hard under her as all of this went through her mind and one of them was prickling with the needles of sleep and she wondered if an arm could die before the rest of her. Then two or three men got on to the bed of the wagon and it nearly collapsed on her. They were cutting holes in the flour bags, the contents spilling over her through the cracks in the wagon’s floor. There was a knife pushed down through those cracks and she screamed, but the sound was so dry that it couldn’t be heard and it was then, with the floorboards pressing against her back, that she saw the features of her mother’s forgotten face. And what do you think of your daughter now? she asked without sounding the words. Wherever did they take you that day you went away? You have a great-grandbaby now, born of my woes, but what difference do we make in this world unless we find our true shape?
The Purchase Page 27
