“How did you come to this?” I asked. We had been standing there for hours, Bland and I, watching the house.
“You mean to ask how a white man comes to the Underground?”
“No. You particularly. How did you come to this?”
“My father died when I was a child, and my mother could not carry us. I did what I could. I worked whatever job was presented, even at that age. But Laura and I were split from each other, and as soon I was old enough, I got as far away from home as I could. I was a young man in search of adventure. I went south and fought in the Seminole War, and was forever changed. I watched men burn Indian camps, shoot down innocents, and steal children. My own struggles, I realized, could be dwarfed by even greater struggles.
“I became aware of my lack of sophistication as to why men fight. I had always been curious about the world, but had not had the chance to achieve an education. But then my mother died, and I returned home to care for Laura. I took work over at the docks. But whenever I had a spare moment, I could be found in the reading rooms of the city. And it was there that I found the cause of abolition, and eventually the Underground. I worked across the country—Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, and then New York, which brought me to Corrine Quinn and then to Lockless.”
Bland was about to say more, when, at last, the whole reason for our vigil appeared before us. A white man stepped out from the home of Elon Simpson, stood out on the sidewalk, and waited. At this Bland pulled a cigar from his coat and lit it. He took a puff and then turned to me, and against the small light from the cigar, I saw him smile. Bland then walked out of the alley and stood in the street. The man moved swiftly toward Bland. Bland turned back to the alley. The man followed him.
“They told me you’d be alone,” the man said. “They told me this would be quick and easy.”
I wondered for a minute if this were Elon Simpson himself, but even there in the dark I could see that he was not outfitted as a gentleman would be.
“Nothing in life is quick and easy, Chalmers,” Bland said. “Nothing important, at least.”
“Yeah, well, I did my part,” he said, and at that he handed Bland a package.
“We need to have a look at these,” Bland said. “Let’s go inside.”
“Like hell,” Chalmers said. “Quick and easy, that was what your people said. You already wronged me by bringing him with you, now you want me—”
“I want you to take us inside,” Bland said. “It really is simple. You promised papers addressed to a certain person. I need to verify that those papers are what you claim. To do that, I need to be able to read them. To read them, I need light, and the nearest light is inside your master’s home.”
“Mr. Simpson ain’t my master,” Chalmers said angrily.
“You’re right, he isn’t. I am. And you’re going to take us inside to verify these papers. And if you don’t, we are going to send our own papers to this man, this Elon Simpson, who is not your master. And these papers will alert him to the exact nature of all of those unchaperoned walks you seem to be in the habit of regularly taking with his sister whenever she visits the city. I’m sure he’d very much enjoy hearing how you have decided to make the scandalizing of his family a part of your regular work.”
It was too dark to see his expression, but I saw Chalmers take a step back. I imagined what he might be feeling right then—the impulse to run. Perhaps all of his effects were packed. Perhaps this sister had already been alerted. Or perhaps she had not and he would simply leave her to bear the consequences of the report. Perhaps there was a coach waiting for him that would take him into the merciful arms of family farther north. Or maybe he would adventure out into the Oregon of my imaginings, or take up in the free company of the sailors I loved.
“Think carefully, Chalmers,” said Micajah Bland. “You can take your chances with a gentleman of vast resources. Or you can take us inside. No one else has to know. It can all be as a dream. No one has to know, I say. It is just us. We can finish this right now. Quick and easy.”
Chalmers hesitated a moment and then began walking back toward the house. We followed him up the stairs, then into the foyer and past the salon and then into a back-room that served as Elon Simpson’s study. Chalmers drew up the lamp-light, and Bland sat down behind the desk to read. There were several papers in the bunch and Bland shuffled through them quickly.
“No,” he said. “None of these will do. Not one.”
“They said you needed some of Mr. Simpson’s papers,” said Chalmers. “They told me, I do this one thing, and I am free.”
“No, I think they told you a good deal more,” Bland responded. “Did you even bother looking to whom these papers were addressed?”
“They said bring you papers. I brought you papers.”
“Well,” Bland said, fixing his eyes on me. “We’re going to need more.”
Bland nodded in my direction, stood, and began inspecting the room with the aid of the lamp. Knowing my part, I sat at the desk and began sifting through the drawers. I flipped through a personal journal, scanned a few letters to acquaintances, looked over some invitations, yet found nothing bearing an address to or receipt from McKiernan. But when I looked up again, I saw that Bland was now focused on a small oak chest in the corner. He knelt down and rubbed his hand over the iron lock. Then, standing again, Bland reached into his pocket and produced a small satchel, and from the satchel he drew a wire. I watched Bland work at the lock, and then looked over to Chalmers, who was now seated in a high-back arm-chair, fiddling nervously. Bland worked the lock for a minute or two, then he looked over to Chalmers and smiled as the top of the chest groaned open.
Reaching in, Bland retrieved a large stack of neatly opened envelopes and put them on the desk. As soon as I began to sort through them, it was clear that these letters were a different sort of communication. They were records of transactions—records of people managed, bought, and sold. The volume of business was brisk and the numbers appended to the people made it clear that these dealings were the root of Elon Simpson’s wealth. I had never seen either Simpson. But I could not help but imagine the son here among the Northern Quality presenting himself as a man of society, a man of good breeding, reputable connections, and respectable business. But shut away in that foot-locker was his unwashed life—the proof of a great crime, evidence of his membership in the dark society that underwrote this opulent home, which was, itself, built upon a sprawling grave, in the heart of this alleged slaveless city.
There were several letters from McKiernan. I took all of them. The more samples I had, the better.
“But he’ll know they’re gone,” Chalmers protested.
“Only if you tell him,” said Bland.
Chalmers followed us to the door.
“Someone will be in touch with you next week. We have good intelligence that Mr. Simpson, your not-master, will not be back before then. The letters will be returned to you. Put them back into the chest and close it up,” Bland said. “And then you’ll be done with us. Quick and easy.”
It only took a couple days for me to write the passes, along with a few letters testifying to Bland’s references in some of the more treacherous regions where he’d be traveling. We had the documents back to Chalmers a day later, and we never heard from him again. Even after things went as they did, nothing was ever traced back to Raymond, Otha, or anyone else at our station. Bland headed to Alabama shortly after. I didn’t get to say farewell. I have so rarely been afforded the right of farewell. But this one seemed more significant as the full plan was made good to me by Raymond.
It was the most daring rescue anyone in Philadelphia had ever undertaken. The plan would send Bland west, where he’d take up haven with one of the more capable agents in Cincinnati. He would scout the Ohio River, and find some sort of appropriate landing either in Indiana or Illinois. Once Bland had found a safe landing, he would v
enture deep into slave country, into the heart of the coffin—Florence, Alabama—and make contact with a Hank Pearson, an old and trusted friend of Otha’s still on the McKiernan place. Hank would then bring Lydia, who would know Bland by the possession of a shawl she’d given to Otha as a remembrance of her. Then, posing as their owner, Bland would lead the family back out. Should they become separated, the passes would certify the right of Lydia and her children to be on the road. The plan was not simply daring in its steps, but in its timing. It was early August—a long way from those seemingly endless winter nights that offered an agent of the Underground so much cover. But it had to be done just then, for it was said that McKiernan was on hard times, and might, at any point, start selling off hands, and then our knowledge and planning would be lost.
20
IT WAS NOW THE end of summer, the slow season for rescues, so that we would have had little to do but await news of Bland’s mission. But fortunate for us, the time coincided with an annual gathering of all those who made legitimate and open war against slavery—concerned citizens who through the journals, oratory, and ballot fought for abolition. We in the Underground fought a secret war, covert, mystical, violent, but were quietly allied with the open one, and the August meeting was the only time when our two factions, hailing from across the country, could meet. The prospect of a reunion with Virginia, with Corrine, filled me with apprehension. After Bland’s departure we began to make our preparations and two weeks later we were off, Raymond, Otha, and I, aboard a private stage, so that as Bland now made his way south, we endeavored to make our way farther north, into the mountainous region of New York.
I was coming to understand that Raymond and Otha fought on both fronts of the war, were leading lights among the abolitionists while keeping their hands in the darker business into which I had been drawn. No station east of the Mississippi conducted more coloreds into freedom than those brought through Philadelphia. Adding to that fame was the odyssey of Otha from the depths of Alabama, from the depths of orphanage, into the waiting arms of his family. But on the second night of our carriage ride, we were joined by one whose regard outstripped us all. Moses.
I now knew her not simply as a creature of legend, but through the many exploits detailed in Raymond’s files. Still, when she stepped into the coach carrying with her the air of all her adventures, I was so dazzled I barely managed a greeting. She exchanged warm pleasantries with Raymond, nodded at Otha, and then held her gaze on me.
“How you holding up, friend?” she asked. It took a moment before I remembered that when she’d last seen me, I was recovering from Ryland’s assault.
“Well,” I said.
She had with her a walking stick, as she did that same night I’d seen her out in the woods, and now, in the daylight, I could see that it had across its body a series of carvings and glyphs. She saw me studying the thing and said, “My trusty walking stick, stripped from a branch of the sweet gum tree. Goes wherever I do.”
The coach rolled on. I found it incredibly difficult to not stare. Even without her power of Conduction, she was the most daring agent on the Underground. I had seen enough of the world, had read enough of Raymond’s files, to know that hers was a soul scarred, but not broken, by the worst of slavery. And I thought then back to my burial in the hole, the time in the jail and those nights when I was hunted as prey. Perhaps I needed it. Perhaps I had to see more of it, to know for myself how low and evil it all really could be. Raymond called this woman Harriet, a name she claimed to prefer over all her other titles. But still he gave her all the respect a soldier might give a great general, answering all her questions while posing few of his own in return, waiting upon her constantly though she rarely requested anything.
A day later, we rolled into the Convention, a campsite nestled in a cleared field, not far from the border with Canada. The land belonged to one of the great benefactors of the Underground, who it was said had plans to resettle a community of coloreds here to task only for themselves. Rain had come a day before our arrival, and as we unloaded from the coach, we sloshed in our brogans. The three of us claimed a space on the outskirts of this camp, toward higher ground, and then dispersed, each to his own way.
I looked out and saw mud-streaked tents extending to the edges of the woods, and then, walking amongst them, saw conventioneers in humor and debate, and then in the larger tents, I saw orators of reform preaching their cause from makeshift platforms. The orators loved spectacle, and seemed to be vying with each other to bring followers to their cause. I waded through the throngs of listeners and paused before a white man in calico breeches and top-hat, who just at that moment was weeping uncontrollably into the sleeve of his coat. Through his tears, he told a tale, which held the audience rapt, of how rum and lager had stripped him of his home and family, until all he had were the clothes in which he was now dressed. And he was resolved, he said, now recovering himself, to remain garbed in this same costume until the curse of spirits was purged from the land.
I walked farther. I stopped before a crush of people and watched as two women, both in overalls, with shaven heads, declaimed on the rights of women to appear with all the freedoms of men, in all the same spheres. And as the women went on, their pitch and volume grew, until not even the gathered audience was spared, for the women now asserted that until we too resolved to take up the cause of suffrage, in this very assembly, we were partners in that vast conspiracy to pillage half the world.
And this pillage continued, I realized, moving farther to still another tent, where a white man stood beside a silent Indian in traditional dress. And the white man spoke of the great depredations he had seen, the iniquitous lengths these Georgians, Carolinians, and Virginians would commit themselves to, in the name of land. And by then, I well knew what would be done upon that land, how the sin of theft would be multiplied by the sin of bondage.
Farther along I went, until I caught sight of a line of children who stood behind a man raging against the factories of this country. The children had been sold into drudgery by parents who could no longer afford them, until they were saved by the beneficence of the society the man represented. Solely through these efforts of charity, the children would be bound to school and rescued from the evils of capital. And farther still, I found that this argument was cousin to another made from a trade unionist, who insisted that the titles of all factories should be stripped from their luxuriating owners and given to those who toiled in them.
And still farther was another related argument made that day, that the factory be rejected in total, that society be condemned a dead letter, and that men and women organize themselves in new communities where all worked together and owned everything in common. And even this was not the pinnacle of the Convention’s radicalism, for at the farthest edges of camp, I found a spinster who insisted that I and everyone rebuff even the bonds of marriage, which was itself as a kind of property, a kind of slavery, and ally myself with the doctrine of “free love.”
It was late morning now. The sun beat down out of the cloudless August sky. I wiped my brow with my jacket sleeve, and sat for a moment on a tree stump away from the fray of conventioneers and tents. It was all so much—an entire university out on that green. New ways of being, new ideas of liberation, now intruded upon me. Only a year ago, I would have rejected them all. But I had seen so much now, so much beyond even all that I had beheld in my father’s books. Where did it end? I could not tell, and this fact both pained me and filled me with joy.
When I looked up, I saw a woman just older than me, standing at the edge of the camp area from where I had just emerged, regarding me closely. When our eyes met, she smiled and approached directly. She had a delicate light brown face, framed by thick black hair that flowed down her cheeks and then to her shoulders.
I stood out of respect and her smile now disappeared. She surveyed me from head to foot, as though trying to be sure of something, and then she said the
last thing I expected to hear.
“How are you, Hi?”
Had I heard this elsewhere, under other circumstances, it would have been a relief, for I would have been filled with thoughts of home. Immediately I began shuffling through a deck of questions, uppermost being how this woman had gotten hold of my name.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all gonna be all right now.” Then she extended a hand and said, “I’m Kessiah.”
I declined her greeting, but she continued on, registering no insult.
“I’m from your place—Elm County, Virginia. Lockless. You don’t remember me. You remember everything, but you don’t remember me. It’s all right. I used to look after you when you were a baby. Your mother would leave you with me when she had to—”
“Who?”
“Your mother—Momma Rose, we called her—she would leave you with me. And the way I have heard it, you know mine—Thena is her name. She lost her children some years ago. All five of them sold on the racetrack of Starfall, sent off to God knows where. But I am here now with the Underground, and I have heard that there was one who was here too, who came up just as I did, and I have heard that that one is you.”
“Can we walk?” I asked.
“We surely can,” she said.
The Water Dancer (Oprah's Book Club) Page 24
