by Murray Pura
“Take me away from here, Kyle. Take me away from the gunfire. Walk me through the quietest parts of town you can find. Please.”
He moved swiftly, snatching up their coats at the door and escorting her away from firecrackers snapping and banging on the roadway near the dance hall. In minutes they were walking past houses unlit by lamps or candles, past roofs and gables and chimneys and picket fences. The pop and crack of the fireworks was gone. When they came to St. Xavier Catholic Church, all darkened, Clarissa asked if they might linger.
“It has a picket fence like my house,” she said. “And the cupola looks like the one at Christ’s Church.”
“It’s a lovely church, and Father McGinnis is a fine priest and a good man. From County Armagh in Ireland.”
“He is a good man. I’ve met him at our boot shop once or twice.” She raised her eyes above the cupola and stared at the scattering of bright white stars. “The constellations are immaculate. Always immaculate. Even when nations and the human race are in tatters.”
“‘As the heavens are higher than the earth.’”
“‘So are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” Clarissa completed the verse from Isaiah. “Thank God His ways are higher than ours. Most of our ways hardly rise ankle high above the mud and slop of winter.”
“Take heart, Miss Ross. Many people in America have good intentions this New Year’s Day, people in both the North and the South.”
“I don’t know what came over me. The fireworks made me think of gunfire, and the gunfire made me think of warfare, and I seemed to see men falling and falling, in long rows, like stalks of autumn corn being cut down.”
“Have you been exposed to gunfire, Miss Ross? Have your senses been assaulted by excessive violence?”
“No, no … no … I don’t know what came over me….”
Of course, she knew very well what had come over her. The killing on Christmas morning. The dead bodies she had helped bury under the dung heap. The threat of other states leaving the Republic now that the holiday season was coming to an end. The long, black clouds of impending conflict. She had always prided herself on not being overly sensitive or excited about death and war and muskets and politics. But something had reached out to her in the icy winter darkness and found her, and she felt a frightening hand clutch her heart more and more fiercely.
“At least I have my town,” she said. “And all its beautiful houses and peace. Its places of worship and faith. Its trim fences and shrubs. Even in winter, our trees have a stark beauty with or without the snow on their naked branches. And the people are fine. Not perfect—who is perfect, Kyle Forrester? But they are fine, and some are exceptionally fine.”
“I believe that.”
“I suppose I’ve always been high-strung. But it was worse when I was eleven or twelve. Mother had to take me on long walks to settle me down. Nothing else seemed to help except that. Summer, autumn, winter. I’ve walked all these streets countless times. I know every nook and cranny, every home and who lives where. I know the pets that have come and gone, and I’ve watched toddlers grow into young women and men. I have my favorite shade trees and my exceptionally favorite sunny spots. I know where the best crab apple trees are, and I’ve raided them too.” She laughed to herself. “I’m talking too much. Like a woman leaning over a picket fence to chat with her neighbor. On and on. I apologize.”
“Clarissa. There is nothing to apologize for. If it helps, I shall walk the streets of Gettysburg with you until dawn. Provided we stop by your house to obtain your parents’ consent.”
“Ha-ha. Which you will never get. But I appreciate the gallantry you have just extended to me.” She put her arm through his. “Come. Escort me home. They’ll be wondering what’s happened.”
“They said we had until one.”
“Because that’s when the ball ends and the hall shuts its doors. They assumed we’d be there the whole time. Now, I’m sure they’ve realized we are no longer in attendance. So let us head to my white picket fence and my seven gables and set their minds at ease. Oh, they trust you, don’t be afraid of that. However, a prompt arrival at the front door will make all the difference. Are you in agreement, Kyle Forrester?”
“I am.”
“Then let us away, sir.”
They had hardly gone a block, past several handsome homes of gables and shutters and the town’s ever-present picket fences, before Clarissa squeezed his arm.
“Perhaps you can promise me something,” she said.
“Anything,” he replied.
“Anything? My, my. You haven’t even heard what I’m about to ask.”
“Well …”
“Do I truly have you wrapped about my finger to such an extent, sir?” she teased. “A tall, strong man like you?”
“I do feel somewhat tethered, Miss Ross. But happily so.”
“Really? I’m glad to hear it. I know I’m being rather bold to speak along these lines, but it was my understanding all men wanted their independence at any cost.”
“Sometimes … intimacy is what brings a man the liberty he seeks. Not a lack of it.”
She smiled and squeezed his arm again. “What a perfect explanation. So, having snared you, I’ve been your liberator and not your captor?”
“You might put it that way.”
“Well, I like the idea of being the woman who sets you free rather than being the woman who places you in some sort of prison. So, if I’m an aspect of your freedom, can you return the favor and bless me by promising there won’t be a conflict within our republic?”
“Oh Clarissa, you know that’s not a promise within my power.”
“But convince me anyways, sir. Lead me to believe it shall not happen.”
“It need not happen. If more states join South Carolina and secede, they can form their own nation with their own laws. Their laws will not impinge on ours, and their judges will not sit on our Supreme Court. So no more Fugitive Slave Law in the North. No more Dred Scott. Do you see? America shall have more freedom than it’s had for decades.”
“That does make me feel better,” Clarissa admitted.
“If all parties realize this, the South can go their way; we can go ours.”
“And there doesn’t need to be armed conflict.”
“Not at all.”
She groaned. “There would still be slavery.”
“But not up here. And no law permitting slave catchers in our towns and counties. Nor would we return any runaways to the states that seceded.”
“You would assist all efforts to keep them safe and secure on our side of the border?”
“Of course I would. It would be the Christian thing to do. And the right thing to do so far as our laws were concerned … as well as God’s laws.”
“Hurrah!” Clarissa threw her head back and laughed. Ringlets of scarlet hair escaped her bonnet and curled to the shoulders of her cape and her coat. “I feel wonderful again.”
“Thanks be to God.”
“Yes, God. And the walk. And my quaint little town. And you.”
“I’m honored.”
She skipped a few moments, still grasping his arm. “War will not come.”
“Well,” he cautioned, “it need not come.”
“War will not come. I say, it will not come.”
Her childlike enthusiasm and optimism were infectious. He could not help but join her in her declaration: “It will not come.”
“It will not come to New York. It will not come to New Hampshire.”
“It will not come to Massachusetts,” added Kyle. “It will not come to Boston.”
“It will not come to Connecticut. It will not come to Rhode Island. It will not come to Providence.”
“It will not come.”
“It will not come to New Jersey,” she called out. “It will not come to Indiana. It will not come to Pennsylvania. It will not come to Philadelphia.”
“It will not come,” Kyle called back.
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“It will not come to Pittsburgh. It will not come to Harrisburg. It will not come to Gettysburg.”
“It will not come. It will not come.”
April 1861
Lancaster County
Clarissa was crouched behind a tree, watching a farmhouse, with twelve runaways huddled around her, waiting for the sun to hurry up and set, chewing rapidly on a long stalk of spring timothy. Her eyes were on the farm, but her mind had wandered back to her skipping along a Gettysburg sidewalk on New Year’s Eve.
She had been full of whimsy and, she admitted later, a large helping of silliness that she pulled Kyle Forrester into during the early hours of New Year’s Day. She hadn’t seen much harm in being foolish in the face of so much uncertainty about the fate of her country. Her Grandmother Avery—God rest her sweet soul—had often remarked that a long face changed nothing at all, except to make a woman look as bad as she felt inside, and thus to present to a troubled world an unpleasant profile that made everyone who saw it feel worse. “Shine, Clarissa Avery,” Grandmother had admonished her. “Shine like a diamond if you are going to carry my name about with you for the rest of your life. Promise me.”
So Clarissa didn’t regret her craziness at the end of one year and the beginning of another. Kyle had gallantly tried to make a promise to her that there would be no war, and she had just as gallantly tried to keep her promise to her Grandmother Avery, in heaven, that her one and only granddaughter wouldn’t show a long face to the world even if there was a war. Which Clarissa fervently prayed there wouldn’t be, well aware there were others praying just as fervently that there would be.
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana had seceded in January. Texas in February. Nothing had happened since, and she was holding her breath, waiting for another Southern boot to drop. But maybe one wouldn’t drop. Maybe the seven states that had left the Republic were content now. They had formed what they called the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama, right after Texas joined what Kyle called the “illegitimate rebellion,” and now they were going about their business and ignoring President Abraham Lincoln and Washington. Except they had begun to create their own army. And had taken over all the United States forts and arsenals in their territories. So that was worrisome.
She chewed the long green stalk of timothy more vigorously. Glanced at the sinking sun, glanced at the farmhouse, glanced at her twelve freedmen, as she always liked to call her passengers on the Railroad, glanced again at the farm where several men were leading large workhorses—Percheron, she thought—into a massive red barn. She put her eyes on the sun once more. It was taking too long. Spring sunsets were too slow. Winter ones were ideal.
“But so cold,” she murmured.
Yet liberty was liberty, whether obtained during the April planting season or under a white January moon that was rigid with frost.
“And speaking of liberty,” she murmured again, plucking a fresh piece of grass to place in her mouth, “where are you, sir?”
And that was one of the truly uncanny moments, she mused later, of her very short life.
For Liberty was at her elbow instantly.
All in black and—with his hood—reminding her of an executioner, a bandit, a roguish clergyman who hid his face from God and his congregation. Or Ichabod Crane’s nemesis in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
“Liberty.” She refused to admit he had startled her once again. “All you need is a pumpkin for your head to be Washington Irving’s protagonist.”
Perhaps he smiled under his perpetual hood. She was certain his dark and distant eyes did on the other side of their slits.
“Some people consider that a horror story, Miss Ross.”
“Yes, well, you do fit into that Halloween festival the Scots and Irish brought with them from the old country.”
“I’ve not had the opportunity to celebrate that odd holiday.”
“You yourself are odd enough, sir, so you ought to try it.”
“When is it?” he asked, his voice muffled and distorted, as always, by the thick cloth of his black hood.
“The last day of October.”
He snorted. “A lifetime away.”
“The world will still be here this autumn, sir.”
“But not, perhaps, our nation as we know it now.”
“Why do you say that?” Clarissa frowned. “Do you know something?”
“No.”
“Has another Southern state seceded?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“How was our Gettysburg when you left it?”
“Quaint and quiet.”
It was almost night, and she decided to risk a question she had been meaning to ask for months: “Where do you live in Gettysburg, sir?”
He did not reply for a moment. Then he said, “I know where you live, and that is sufficient.”
Instantly, her temper flared. “It’s not right you should know so much about me and I know absolutely nothing about you.”
“I’m a conductor. It’s important I know who I work with.”
“I’m a conductor too.”
“I’m a more important one.”
“Are you indeed?” She knew her eyes were blazing. “And you base that odious misconception on exactly what facts?”
“I’m older, wiser, have been on the Railroad longer, and I don’t have a lady friend to make a mush of my brain the way you have a beau to make a complete mess of yours.”
She exploded. “What?”
“Shh. Slave catchers from Virginia and Arkansas are thick as ticks on a Maryland hog tonight.”
“I don’t care where they are from, and I don’t care about your hogs either. How dare you pry into my private life?”
“Our work is hazardous. There mustn’t be any weak links in the chain, or people die and slaves are recaptured.”
“So?”
“So it’s my job to be sure you are safe and that we are safe with you.”
“I can’t believe it. Do you prowl about my house like a common thief? Or an unkempt alley cat?”
“I don’t. But the seminarian Kyle Forrester moons about your house enough for six or seven alley cats.”
She wanted to strangle him. “You and I were getting along much better until now.”
“He is all right as far as most seminarians go. But he has a lot to learn about women and about life.”
She was one split moment of indecision from slapping him across his hooded face. Or tearing the hood from his head and pummeling him properly. “When I was fourteen, I beat up a schoolyard bully named Billy Thomas for stealing my lunch and constantly harassing me and my friends. I gave him two black eyes and a bloody nose, and it was one of the proudest moments of my life. I even made the big lout cry. Oh my, how I enjoyed that. How I loved cutting him down to size. Served the blackguard right. I was suspended for a month, and I didn’t care. It was well worth it.” She glared at Liberty. “I feel like giving you a licking right now. Don’t think I can’t do it, sir. I’m stronger and faster and meaner than you think.”
“Like a badger,” he responded, looking at a lantern swaying back and forth in the farmyard.
“Exactly like a badger,” she retorted.
“Or a wolverine.”
“Exactly like a wolverine.”
“There is the signal, Joshua; we must be off.”
“Don’t you dare turn away from me when I am speaking to you.” She grasped his arm and squeezed until she was certain it hurt, although he did not flinch or make a sound. “You yourself have a great deal to learn about women and life, sir. To press the matter further, Mr. Forrester is a gentleman, which you are not, and enjoys my good graces, which you no longer do. I wish he were by my side right now instead of you.”
Liberty shook off her grasp and stood up in the dark grove of trees thick with spring leaves. “That would not help you much, Miss Ross, since he disapproves of what you are doing and would not lend you a hand in breaking the law, no matt
er how often you bestowed your good graces on him. Including your frequent hugs.”
She swung as hard as she could with her closed fist but only hit empty air. He was moving quickly across the field to the farm and gestured for the runaways to follow him. They did. She was the last person to leave hiding. And so angry she could barely see the glimmer of the lantern in the blackness.
I’ll murder him. I’ll murder him as soon as we have these passengers safely on their way to New York, and I’ll tell everyone slave catchers did it. With their bare hands. Because I intend to kill him with my bare hands. Just the way I dealt with that bully in eighth grade. Only this time I’ll send him all the way to God. Or the devil. Yes, most likely I shall be sending him straight to the devil.
How much she meant it, whether she intended to pounce on him the moment she had him alone in the woods or the barn, like the tomboy and wildcat she knew she could be, and teach him a lesson he would never forget, she was destined never to find out. For as fate would have it—or Providence, which was what she believed saved Liberty from her fury—the Amish operators on the farm had news that startled the wrath right out of her. It was as if life itself punched her in the stomach and robbed her of all her air. And she had not seen it coming.
“Hello, Amos,” she said to a tall, lean, bearded man dressed in Amish black, along with a broad-brimmed black hat, as he ushered them into the barn where the Percherons were in their stalls. “It’s very good to see you again.”
“Ja.” He nodded. “And you, sister. Rebecca will be bringing food and drink from the house directly. Brother Ezekiel is making up a pack for your journey to Lebanon. That will be in a day or two.”
“How far is it, Amos?” She had no idea if they were indeed Amos and Ezekiel and Rebecca, for the Amish regularly used names from the Bible, or whether those were simply their operator names. It didn’t matter. “And thank you for taking us in.”
“God is not a slave driver. Neither should His children be.”
“Amen.”
“Were you having to run quite a lot, sister?” he asked, searching her face.
