“It hardly matters at the moment,” Milton said. “Unless we’re up and running before the snows, it’s just too dangerous out on those waves.”
Hannah said, “So the question is, will Chisholm come at us sooner … or later?”
Jack answered, “It depends on what he finds.”
Hannah nodded. “Or who.”
In a kinder, softer voice than he normally used, Jack said, “Hannah, maybe it’s time we give this up. I mean, we’ve done a lot of good for a lot of people. And if the war is coming, that’ll settle all this once and for all, take it out of our hands. Maybe it’s time we counted ourselves lucky and stepped back, let nature take its course.”
Belle watched in silence as Hannah turned to her husband. “When slavery is abolished, we’ll stop. Then and only then. Otherwise we’ll fight with everything we have, our resources and our wits. We’ll out-think them, out-fight them if we must.”
Jack shook his head. “Well don’t you worry about that, my wife. If we stay in this battle, then fight we must.”
She offered him a little half smile in return. “Then fight we will.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Belle and Alice had begun helping with the laundry, staying in or near the smithy house, keeping Joseph close by. But Joseph was changing by the day, smiling more and running faster and farther from the house, despite Belle’s instructions to the contrary. Joseph never spoke, but Belle knew he could hear and that he could understand English, which she’d taught him herself.
And it was just as important to help out at the estate, if for no other reason to make them less conspicuous among the other workers or anyone else who might come by. The sheriff was never far off, but a few calls to her friends in New York had managed to keep him at bay; at least that was how Belle understood it. What mattered was that they felt safe.
Though the sad fact remained that they’d be leaving Hannah’s estate soon enough, even they remained as welcomed guests and workers over the winter. They’d have money when they left, though they insisted on volunteering their efforts to pay their way.
The Daughter of the She Bear wouldn’t hear of it. If they insisted on working, and there was always some work to be done, then Hannah insisted that they be paid, and the same as any other laborer for the same work as well.
“You think thar’ really a mine out thar’ wif’ gol’ in n’ere, Mamma?”
Alice shook her head. “What’s ‘at t’us’n? Don’t you get ‘cher head around d’em fool notions, chil’. You stay close, do yo’ chores wif’ you mamma, watch our Joseph, ‘at’s all.”
Belle nodded, returning her attention to the wet socks in her hands, wringing and hanging them on the rack just behind the smithy house.
They spent a few more minutes in silence, scrubbing the socks in the soapy water and wringing them, shaking them and hanging them.
Belle started singing, very softly, “Follow ‘da drinkin’ gourd, follow ‘da drinkin’ gourd … ”
“Why don’t ‘choo go out, fetch our boy,” Alice said. Belle nodded and dropped the soaked sock back into the tub of water. Belle knew she was being sent on more than just an errand, more than just the necessary job of wrangling the boy and keeping him out of trouble. Belle’s mamma was excusing her to play, to find her brother and enjoy yet a few more of the fleeting moments of happiness in their young and treacherous lives.
Belle found Joseph chasing another butterfly. They seemed to delight in teasing him, and he surely enjoyed the chase himself. Belle stopped just to enjoy the sight of him running, scampering really, no longer a care in the world. He’d always been distant, in a world of hurt that even Belle and the others couldn’t see. Now he seemed to be alive in a paradise that was even brighter and clearer to him than to anyone else, even those who had suffered alongside him, suffered even worse than his few years had allowed.
Joseph seemed to see more, to feel more, to understand more, and at that moment he appeared perfectly tuned to the world around him, secure in the arms of Mother Nature herself.
But Belle was more attuned to the danger than Joseph, at least at that moment. As much as she would have liked to, she couldn’t let the boy run around the yard chasing that butterfly for the rest of the day, never mind the rest of his life.
“Joseph, you come here right nah, boy!” But Joseph just released a little crackle of laughter and went on chasing the butterfly. “Don’t you pay me no mind, boy!” But Joseph went on paying her no mind at all. Belle laughed into a quick dash toward Joseph, a playful tone in her reprimand when she called out, “I’ll whup you up good you don’t mind me, boy!” When she was almost close enough to reach her brother, he dodged sharply to the side and ran, his little legs carrying him much faster than Belle had been ready for.
“You come back here, chil'!” But Joseph just laughed and kept running, arms flailing as Belle bore down on him from behind. Fast and happy though he was, Belle was almost twice his height and it didn’t take long for her longer legs to bring her racing up to him from behind. She scooped him up with one fell swoop, a cackle spilling out of his mouth as his feet pulled up off the grass. Belle spun him, arms around his waist, a dizzying spiral that got slower quickly.
“Awright,” Belle said as she set him down and took his hand firmly in hers. “Mamma wants us fer chores, bes’ we not dawdle.”
Belle led Joseph back around the side of the smithy house to the laundry tub in the back, the socks hanging on the line. When Belle saw her mother’s feet lying flat on the ground, her blood ran cold. Her legs carried her farther, slow steps to reveal Alice’s body perfectly still, one arm over her body and the other idle on the grass at her side.
“Mamma? Mamma!” The heat rose up in little Belle’s body, ten years of loss and misery and struggle suddenly erupting in her heart, her brain, her entire being dedicated to one single scream, tearing up out of her throat and spiraling up over the estate.
*
Belle cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. Mo took the tragedy with stoic quiet, struggling to stand up straight but trying with all his might. Joseph pulled back into his shell, and Belle knew how disappointing that taste of ultimate tragedy was to the sweetened palate that had grown used to the flavor of hope. She knew he’d taste hope again, though, if he gave it a chance, and if fate and life gave him a chance.
For herself, Belle wasn’t so sure.
Hannah recited the 23rd Psalm, which Belle had heard too many times before, when her fellow slaves would find the only real escape most of them ever did, the only freedom that could never be taken back or taken way, the freedom of heaven.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
Jack Kincaid, the horseman called Don, Betsy the cook, and every single member of the estate staff attended the funeral. Dozens of Chinese men, who lived in a miniature town on the other side of the mountains where the mines were, the Irish who worked the orchards, all gathered together to pay respect to the fallen slave woman, brought low by a lifetime of labor and then high by the grace of God.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”
Belle knew her mamma was with God, just as her pappy, Mo, and their new friends all told her. She knew Alice Robinson’s fear and suffering had ended. But she also knew that they were so close to the paradise they’d dreamed of, searched for, even, for Alice, died for.
Why, Lord, Belle wanted to cry out, why did You have to take my mamma now, now after all our strife, now wif’ such good thangs comin’? Maybe … maybe good thangs ain’t comin’ an’ You jus’ did’n wan her to suffer mo’ none? ‘Dat yo’ way, Lord, ‘dat yo’ plan?
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.”
Joseph clung to Belle’s side and Mo clung to them both, standing humbled and drained, little strength to face the storm of their loss.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil
: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
But the words rang true in Belle’s heart, in her mind, in her soul. They were the few words from the white man Belle found comforting, beyond the chance of any falsehood; until she met Hannah. Hannah had proven that every word from the white mouth was not necessarily a lie, that every outreach was more than an attack. Belle knew Hannah was not God, of course, nor the Mother Mary nor the second coming of Christ. But she did strike Belle as kind of an angel, surely she was sent from heaven to protect Belle and her kind, to reverse the wrongs her kind had done to the innocent.
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
How true that was, Belle knew, that this woman has done just those things, the Robinsons eating the morsels of freedom even as men of evil sought their lives.
Belle leaned into her father’s embrace and looked up at the face of the woman who had saved her life, who was faithful and true. But even she, with her truth and her might, could only do so much to save them, or herself. Belle knew that too.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Silence followed Hannah’s recital as several workers stepped toward the open grave and began shoveling dirt in to cover her up and let her rest.
Belle’s voice leaked out of her mouth, low and cautious. “Follow ‘da drinkin’ gourd.”
Mo joined her, all eyes falling on them as the shovels went on about their sad duty. “Follow ‘da drinking gourd. For ‘da ol’ mans a-waitin’ for to carry ya t’freedom … ”
Hannah’s voice joined them for the last line: “When you follow ‘da drinkin’ gourd.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The bitter winter winds brought most of the businesses at the Kincaid estate to a halt. Some of the shafts were still being worked. Sheltered from the snow and cold, the most miserable and unpopular job on the grounds were seasonally the most comfortable and most highly sought.
The orchards were covered and the Irish disbanded with good pay, most expected to return with the spring.
The stretch of railroad Hannah had struggled to have built lay unfinished en route, the victim of various presumed accidents, though both Hannah and her husband harbored their doubts. They never stopped looking for a remedy though, a new and better way, and that made a powerful impression on Belle and even, it seemed, on Joseph.
Belle slowly got used to not having her mamma around, but it wasn’t easy. Hannah seemed especially tender to the kids’ sorrow and needs, telling them the story of how she lost both her parents when just a child of about the ages of the Robinson siblings.
They sat wide-eyed at night to hear the story of her father facing down a band of armed ruffians, swinging his fists to the last, making his heroic stand. It made Belle think of her own pappy, hoping he’d someday find the heroism he was seeking; but that unlike Hannah’s father, Mo might survive it.
When she told the rest of the story, of the She Bear who came out of the woods to her rescue, Belle didn’t have a doubt that what Hannah seemed to believe was true. That bear was more than just some She Bear, more than any spirit of the wilds, but her own mamma somehow returned to carry on her duty, to protect and nurture, to find some peace and power that she never found in life.
Belle knew those feelings because she felt the same about her own mamma, still feeling so close even though she was so far away. Alice had never finished her journey, never reached their destination, her destiny.
Maybe she come t’me one day yet, Belle couldn’t help but think, in some great fo’m likes a she-bear, maybe even ‘da great She Bear her own mighty self!
The cold, blustery days of the winter crept on, Belle and Joseph spending more time with Hannah in the big house as there was less to see to around the property. Mo insisted on working as he could, seeing to the smithy house and keeping a sharp eye around the property.
They spent more and more time playing games in the house, cluttered around toys she had shipped in from the East Coast. Joseph pushed around a miniature single horse-drawn gig with real moving wheels. Belle placed the tiny dolls and wooden pieces of furniture, glad just to be handling such expensive pieces, imagine with even greater clarity the life she always dreamt for herself and her family.
It seemed closer than ever.
Jack Kincaid watched them often from across the big parlor, standing quietly and watching them play, revealing his well-hidden tenderness. Belle often saw Hannah from very close up, just a few inches away sometimes, and Belle knew Hannah was aware Jack was in the room. But she’d let minutes go by, five or ten or more, without glancing over at him. She seemed to know he was waiting for that, and she seemed to delight in denying it to him.
But there was something else between them, a somber truth that hovered in the room just out of reach of the happy crackle of laughter and conversation, little voices for the dolls, horse sounds for the gig. When they would look at one another, sharing a charmed silence, they'd often look away quickly, their smiles fading. It always made Belle wonder what had happened between then, and then she began to realize what hadn’t happened between them.
Children of their own.
Belle knew even then that she was helping Hannah realize a dream that God didn’t seem to want her to realize, at least for a time. It made things clearer to Belle, why Hannah was so loving and tender; why her husband, who was normally so gruff, became so quiet and patient and somber in the moments of family play.
Belle also knew that kind of sadness could play out in other ways, terrible ways, and how lucky she was that Hannah and Jack Kincaid didn’t endure their sorrows the same way the widower Beau Robinson had. He drank hard, yelled loud, made demands that would make a demon shudder.
But Hannah and Jack were people of a different sort, nothing like the plantation Robinsons at all. But with all the play and the loving and the stories of Hannah’s own childhood, Belle couldn’t help but think that there may not be that many differences between herself and the great Daughter of the She Bear. They seemed to have much more in common than different, it struck Belle, and that only gave her imagination and her confidence room to grow.
The winter passed slowly, but the house was warm with love and acceptance. Mo and Jack began spending more time together, with Mo serving as his personal assistant in small matters, and stepping in around the kitchen when Betsy needed him for something she otherwise couldn’t fetch or lift.
During the Christmas holiday, Hannah and Jack invited Belle and her brother and father to enjoy the day with them in their home, cozy by the fire. The Kincaids even bought gifts for the three. Mo pulled out the fine, gold pocket watch with care and awe, his hands nearly trembling to consider receiving such a fine gift. It was literally worth more than his own life.
Belle absolutely fell in love with the copy of the Holy Bible Hannah gave her, old and beaten and weathered. “This was our Bible coming out West,” she explained, bringing a tear of gratitude to Belle’s eye. Joseph was nearly out of his mind with glee to receive a fine compass, with a silver cup and glass face. Jack Kincaid said to him, in a voice very deep and stern, “Every man needs a compass,” and tapped the boy on the shoulder. “It points true north. You’ve got a long life ahead of you, Joseph. You should always know where you're headed.”
Joseph nodded, holding the compass with a new and very adultlike respect.
*
Spring finally broke over Indiana, the scurry and scramble of business quickly hitting a high pitch. The Irish were back in greater numbers to tend to the orchards, the Chinese pouring into the coal mines, carts filling and heading east to ship by train to New York and out West as well.
Work began on the Kincaids’ personal railway heading north, from Marion County up to Michigan City. But the work was slow and the caravan of horse-drawn carts was often under siege by road agents. Hannah had doubl
ed up on the armed guard along the routes, but whoever was sending the bandits only matched her efforts with their own.
And road agents weren’t the only hazards. The sheriff of Laporte County was stopping the caravan to search for human contraband, and they’d discovered the hidden compartments under the carriages. Though empty and excused by the drivers as for use to hide hidden gunmen in the case of increased attack, the excuse wasn’t going to hold up forever. The stopping and searching was still going to happen en route, even if Hannah’s political connections protected the carts once they got to the dock at Lake Michigan.
As a result, Hannah’s part in the Underground Railroad had been ground to a halt just as if it was still the dead of winter. The spring sun brought no thawing in her mission of freedom. She’d sent word through her people to the Chippewa and other local tribes to keep up the fight against the slave hunters but to direct the slaves around the den of the She Bear, as it became known.
Hannah became disgruntled, frustrated, the sparkle of her countenance fading. Belle could sense it, and Joseph could too, so both were eager to share their affection and gratitude and bring their guardian angel as much solace as was possible. And Hannah seemed eager to accept it, always returning their proximity with a big, hearty hug and a kiss on the cheek for each.
Belle and the Robinsons were welcomed to stay indefinitely. Mo’s services were less in demand with the return of the estate’s full labor force, but more men meant more tending to the grounds, the laundry, helping to feed them and keep the kitchen clean. And with Alice gone, there was always a need for help around the kitchen when Mo wasn’t seeing to Jack Kincaid’s personal needs around the property.
That left Belle and Joseph more idle time around the house. Belle and Joseph were both getting bigger, and by their age they’d both be working hard on the Robinson plantation. But though they would have been overworked and in misery down south, in the elevated plains of Indiana, the Robinson children wanted to work. They were eager to show their gratitude, to earn their place, to make sure Hannah didn’t change her mind about having them around.
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