Maps of Fate

by Reid Lance Rosenthal

  CHAPTER 6

  MARCH 18, 1855

  STRENGTH OF CONVICTION

  Six hundred miles southeast of where the bloody corpses lay crumpled in the plundered wagons along the Cache la Poudre, and several hundred miles southwest of where Mac’s wagon train had begun its westward journey, Israel sat hunched over, his sloughed shoulders forward, his curly salt and pepper head just inches from a yellowed newspaper. A pair of round spectacles, rimmed in a thin brass frame, hung from his wide nose. The pages were spread out on an old nicked table made of scrap lumber. The corners of the homemade table were worn, rounded like Israel’s once broad shoulders. He squinted as he read, mumbling the sentences aloud in a low baritone, sometimes repeating unfamiliar words to get their gist.

  His gaze raised to the far wall of the ramshackle structure he and his wife called home. Several used pots and ladles hung from smelted, square-head spikes over the weighty, cast iron wood stove. A few patches of colored fabric were tacked to the exposed rough studs of the twenty-by-twenty building, “To give the place some color,” his wife had said.

  Peeling the thick-glassed spectacles from one ear, and then the other, he cleaned the lenses with his shirttail, giving careful thought to what he had just read: “New York – January 17, 1855 – Slaves Find Help In Escape.”

  Mistress Tara had somehow obtained the glasses when she secretly taught him to read, and realized he was having difficulty seeing the print. He was about to don them again when he heard footsteps creaking on the broken steps to the rickety front porch at the only door of the one-room shack.

  He hastily closed and folded the paper, covered it with a large, square, hand-carved wooden tray he kept on the table for exactly that purpose, and quickly stood. The sudden movement knocked the wobbly old chair over. Its rounded backrest, missing one vertical spindle broken long ago, bounced several times on the uneven, rough-sawn planks of the floor before it came to rest.

  The door, hinged to the frame with strips of dried, cracked leather, swung open. The rounded figure of a woman, whose tired body and worn features belied her middle age, stepped over the threshold. Israel let out his breath, letting his shoulders relax. His wife’s hair, all but a few wiry grey strands mixed with black, was tucked under a blue print bandana. Her face was full, round, and high-cheeked. She carried a wooden water pail in one hand and a burlap sack, its bottom bulging unevenly, in the other. She stood just inside the open door, her eyes darting from the chair, to the table, to Israel’s face.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, husband, if you’re going to read them papers Mistress Tara smuggles to you, you best do it somewhere’s else where the bosses can’t walk in and catch you. That old black body of yours is way past time it could take twenty lashes.”

  Israel shuffled his feet. “Now, Lucy…”

  “Don’t you dare ‘now Lucy’ me,” she wagged her finger at him, the digits crooked from years of manual labor. “You know it’s against the law for our kind to read, and if we’re caught, Lord knows it ain’t pretty.” She shut the door partially with her elbow, closing it firmly with a rearward push from the sole of her foot. She walked over to the table and dumped the burlap sack with a purposefully aimed thud in the square tray covering the newspaper. Israel backed up a step. Hands on hip, she faced him.

  “You know, there’s even some darkies would turn you in. This hovel they gives us is better than most, and sure ’nough there are others who would curry favor with the massuhs and get themselves a better roof. At least this place doesn’t leak.”

  “Lucy, we’ve been doing other people’s bidding since we was born. Reading these papers tells me what’s going on out there in the world, even if they are months old when I get them. That anti-slavery paper out of Lawrence, the Kansas Free State is good, but this one…” He slipped the tray carefully off the yellowed paper, “The New York Times Sunday Edition, January 17, 1855, it’s the best.” He lovingly traced one crooked, calloused finger down the edge of the page.

  “Takes me a long time to read it and there’s words I have to sort out, so I understand what the writings ’bout, but one thing’s for certain sure. There’s changes comin’ and I thinks they be comin’ right quick.” Israel looked closely at his wife. “Have you overheard the field bosses talkin’?”

  Her hands still on her hips, Lucy pursed her lips. Her wide-set, brown eyes remained unwavering in their reproachful expression. She spoke in a low tone, with a glance at the door. “It just so happens, when I was cleaning the kitchen after serving dinner up at the main house the other night, I did hear talk. It was about folks called abolitionists and some men named Thomas and Quantrill. They particularly did not like some man I think was from Illinois. Lincoln, if I recall correctly. And then someone named Brown—they thought he was crazy,” she paused.

  “And, Mistress Tara has stopped taking supper with them.” She shook her head slowly and wagged a finger at him, “But that’s not our business Israel, that’s white folks business. Our chore is to stay alive, have food on the table and make sure there’s wood for that stove,” she nodded at the grimy, 1735 Castrol cast iron cook stove in the corner, its black flue pipe ascending up to the roof in segments, some of which were bent and ill-fitting.

  She sighed. “It’s just turning spring, and summer will be here soon enough, I reckon. You’ll be busy taking care of the horses and mules and other critter fixins. I thank God you’re not in the field anymore. There were nights you’d come home so tired and dirty you didn’t even have strength to eat.”

  Israel walked slowly over to his wife. He was not a tall man, but he stood a head higher than she. He wrapped his arms around her back at her shoulders, pulled her toward him and kissed the top of her head where the brittle curls of her hair poked out from under the tight wrap of the bandana. Her unflinching, rigid posture loosened only slightly. “Lucy, we been married close to twenty-four years, and you’re still the prettiest woman in the Oklahoma Territories.”

  She pulled away from him. “Stop feeding me that nonsense. I been listening to it since before we married. We both know it’s not the truth. We are two dirt-poor, half-broken down old darkies. I was birthed here, you came here shortly after you was born, and this stuff about the world…” she gestured at the paper, “and reading all that nonsense written by a bunch of white folks living rich in some big city two months’ wagon ride from here don’t change nothing. They don’t even call this Oklahoma. They call it the Unnamed Territory. They don’t know nothing. We can’t change them facts. Stop thinking of yourself and your notions. Think of me. Think of us. You get caught reading that paper and we get thrown out of this shack, what we gonna do?”

  Israel felt his jaw set, and the muscles in his face tighten. He stared at his wife with unblinking eyes. She finally looked down. He took a step forward and very gently lifted her chin so that his gaze once again bore into hers.

  “What we’ll do, woman, is we will be free. And I’d rather be free and dead than alive and a slave. I am plumb fed up with ‘Yes Massuh,’ ‘No Mistress,’ and ‘Yessir boss,’ being told what to do, not getting paid and being only able to provide this, ” he swept his arm around the barren interior, “to the single person in this life that I love.”

  “Free?” Lucy’s voice rose in pitch and volume. “You’re talking foolishness again. Look around you, Israel. You have two pairs of clothes, one set of overalls and one pair of old work boots. I got two work dresses, my church outfit, and one dress-up set for when I’m serving over at the main house. We got seven dollars saved up from that leather stitching you do for folks in town, and you are not supposed to be doing that. We got nothing.”

  Israel felt that tight, constricted, frustrated feeling. It was always like this, whenever they had these arguments, which had become more frequent over the past year.

  “Lucy,” Israel pounded his chest hard several times with one fist, “…we got this. We got heart. We got spirit.” He raised his forefinger to his forehead. “We got brains.
We got those things and we don’t need nothin’ else other than the freedom to put ’em to work for us and not for others.”

  Lucy exhaled in an exasperated sigh. She looked down at her feet, shook her head slowly and then shifted her eyes to him again, her voice softer, “There are times, Israel, when you say that with so much belly fire behind the words that you get me at least half-believing.” She sighed again, and eased herself onto the only other chair in the room, rubbing her knees. “These old joints are achy today. Sure sign of weather coming in. I think I dislike spring more than any other season. You don’t know what can happen from one day to the next.”

  She continued to rub her knees with her hands, gnarled finger joints wrapped around her knee caps. Israel noticed the slightly lighter appearance of her skin up to her middle forearms, the result of doing laundry in bleach, day in and day out, up at the main house. The faded sun of late afternoon filtered through the four pane window, the mullion making a cross-like exception in the beam that fell across the table, brightening the yellowed white of the newsprint.

  His heart lurched as he saw a tear trickle down the wide curve of one of her cheeks.

  “You know I’m proud of you, Israel. You are a good man, strong and smart…” She smiled gently. “And there was a time you was the best dancer on the plantation.”

  Israel chuckled, “If I remember right, we could sure shake a leg.”

  Lucy giggled, “Yes sir, we sure could.” She looked down at her hands still moving in tight circles on her knees.

  Israel knew she was thinking. “Lucy, I been reading about these things that the field bosses has been talking ’bout and what you been hearing over at the main house. I tell you there’s a change headed our way. This Lincoln fellow, he’s against slavery, and there’s plenty more like him. Some say he may run for president, although most think he can’t win this time anyway, but there’s lots of folks angry. There was this agreement that was made between white folks from the North and South called the Missouri Compromise, ’cept for the state of Missouri. It dates back to about 1820, and stopped slavery above the thirtieth parallel. No one paid it any mind. They tried some tom-foolery with that compact in 1850, but that didn’t go nowheres. Now there are those that want to extend slavery north of that. That line ain’t too far above us, and north of it using slaves has been illegal.

  “Now they just passed this new one last year…” He walked over to the table, sat down, put on the spectacles, folded back a few pages of the paper, ran one finger down the columns and stopped. “… Yep, the 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act. That set more folks off against one another. You heard about the shootings in the Kansas Territories few months back. There will be a lot more of that. There’s lots of people that think there is going to be a war, slave states against the non-slave states mostly, the South against the North.”

  “Last time I checked Israel, we are considered to be in the South. Missouri and Arkansas ain’t but a good day’s ride north or east. And that is all slave country,” she said with resigned sarcasm.

  Israel made a fist and slammed it on the table, but with no real force, “And, that new law I tolds you ’bout just now—it made Kansas a Territory, and its free—no slavery—and it ain’t much more than two or three days’ walk.”

  He rose from the table, bent down on one knee in front of her, reached out his calloused, once powerful hands and wrapped them around one of hers.

  “Look at me, Lucy. Have I ever told you wrong?”

  Lucy’s eyes held his. She shook her head slowly.

  “That’s right. No, I ain’t. And I’m telling you, I don’t read so good, but I’ve done read and overheard enough to know slavery ain’t gonna last forever. It might be over sooner than you think. The trick is, we might be too old, and if all the darkies get free all at the same time, it’s gonna be rough. Most folks like us don’t think like I am talking. The Massuh’s don’t want us to have these thoughts that’s why they say we aren’t allowed to read. I’m telling you woman, we need to get out ahead of what’s going to happen. We don’t want to be where there’s gonna be armies or worse yet, a bunch of godless bad men pretending to be armies like that Quantrill and Brown fellas you heard them talking about. They is in the paper, too.”

  Lucy looked at him intently. She blinked rapidly and another tear trickled down her opposite cheek. “Even if what you say is true, Israel, there’s nothing we can do. This is all much bigger than us. It will all just be like before. Everything we do, everything we are, everything we have, our lives, will always be decided by others.”

  Israel reached up both hands, pressed them gently against either side of her face and held her head steady just inches from his own. “You’re wrong, Lucy. We got four things way bigger than the white man’s armies, or the Massuh’s rules. You got you, I got me, we got each other. And we got the Lord. Ain’t nothin‘ bigger. No one can take our spirit from us.” He paused and looked earnestly into her eyes. “…If we don’t do something with these gifts the Lord done give us, then we got no one to blame but us. Let me read you something.”

  Israel stood carefully, pushing down both hands on his raised knee to lift his other leg off the floor. He went to the door, opened it a crack and looked out. He made his way to the window and carefully surveyed the flat, wavy, undulations of the countryside, and the main house several hundred yards distant. He moved over to the bed, which was little more than a raised wooden platform topped by a thin mattress with strands of straw poking out from a threadbare cotton cover, overlain by several tattered, dark wool blankets.

  He reached under the mattress and drew out a folded piece of old, ragged, brownish-yellow newspaper. “You know what this is?” He shook the paper, which crinkled in the stillness of the shack. “This is a printing of the Declaration of Independence. You know, July 4th, when they have their picnic and such. This here paper is what happened when some white men decided they wasn’t going to be slaves of other white folks in the seventeen hundreds. And this applies to all citizens of the United States of America and that’s what we are part of.”

  Lucy shook her head again, “But that’s the point, Israel. We ain’t citizens.”

  “By God, we are. This paper says so and there’s a bunch of folks that agree with it. I’ve been reading about—hold on a minute—let me find it.” Israel carefully unfolded the paper, its brittle, compressed pieces reluctant to separate. He fumbled his spectacles onto his nose with one hand and held them there, “All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…” he bent his head closer to the print “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

  Israel slowly took off the spectacles, thoughtfully refolded the paper and slipped it carefully far back under the mattress. He turned to face his wife again. “Lucy, ‘all men’ means us! I think it’s high time that Lucy and Israel grabbed their share of that ‘equal’ and that ‘liberty’.”

  Lucy was wide-eyed. “Okay, supposing I was to say yes, Israel, what do you plan to do? You planning on going to Massuh Jim and askin’ him to borrow his Sunday carriage for a day? Maybe tell him we just want to go for a ride in the woods and you’ll be back by sundown, don’t worry?” She chuckled dejectedly at the thought.

  “No, Lucy, I think we bide our time, make ourselves a plan, concentrate on what we need, pick warm weather, and lite out one night. We head north, and get in touch with this outfit called the ‘Underground Railroad.’ Paper says it runs right up through the Kansas Territory. It’s secret, on account of that Fugitive Slave Act the Southern states got through. Anyone helpin’ escaped slaves can go to jail. But we’ll find them—I know we will. We let them help us get ourselves west. You’ve heard Massuh Jim and his friends talk about the Rocky Mountains where they go hunting for elk once in a while. I’ve been reading up a mite on them, too. They are big, mighty harsh, and very few folks. There’s free darkies out there makin’ names for themselves like this fella I read of, Barney Ford. But, he was born free. We can’t
take no chances. We will go to the other side of the range and be far from what things I think are going to happen. We will do what we have to, and if we die trying then its far better than taking our last breath in this pile of wood we don’t even own.”

  They stared at each other for several minutes and then Lucy broke into a laugh. Her body shook. “Oh, Lordy, Lordy,” she gasped.

  Her laughter infected Israel who finally had to sit down and hold his sides. Lucy had one hand over her chest trying to catch her breath. “You are crazy, Israel. You been crazy since the first day I met you. Maybe that’s why I love you.” She gasped for air and wiped the tears from her eyes with the tips of her fingers, “You figure out how us two old niggas is gonna do what would be impossible for a twenty-year-old, and Lucy Thomas will stand by her man. We will put our lives in the hands of the Lord and see what He decides.” She shook her head in disbelief at her own words. “The Rocky Mountains? Don’t know much about that place. Maybe you could read me some of those words so at least I know little bit about where we’ll be headed when we die.”

  “Sure enough, Lucy. Sure enough. I will.”

  CHAPTER 7

  MARCH 18, 1855

  PRACTICALITIES

  Rebecca’s hips and shoulders swayed with the movement of the wagon. She had willed herself to not say a word to Inga and Johannes. Despite her rigid posture and the cold, stern forward immobility of her head, her eyes kept shifting sideways toward the two of them. There was no mistaking the shared glances and soft smiles between them, or the opportunity each took to touch the other, even if just insignificant brushes of fingers against legs or arms. It all gave rise to an annoying feeling she couldn’t quite place, and that annoyed her even more.

  Angry? Maybe a tad, she thought. Jealous of Johannes? Impossible. Of Inga? No, she is my friend. Lonely? Never. Envious? She felt her eyes widen with sudden realization, and sighed.