Steal Away Home

by Lois Ruby

  “Mr. James, sir?”

  “Sorry, I was off somewhere else, I guess.”

  “Yessir, but you nailed your shirt to the bed.”

  James yanked at his shirt and heard a sickening rip. Ma would never let him hear the end of this, while she patched his shirt.

  “Hold up, Mr. James.” The man expertly separated the two pieces of wood so James could slide his shirt out.

  “She’s going to tan my hide.” James quickly tucked the shirttail into his trousers.

  The man snorted, fighting back laughter.

  “Thee musn’t tell my mother. Promise?”

  “Yessir!”

  • • •

  At dusk that night, the runaways were layered in the warmest clothes Ma could find. The woman carried a cloth bundle over her shoulder—canned tomatoes and corn, dark bread, some jerky, the last wedge of gooseberry pie. They waited. Finally, a strange man came to the door, but Ma seemed to recognize him.

  “I heard no wagon wheels,” Ma said.

  “Couldn’t shake a wagon free, Miz Weaver. I’ll walk ’em to the next station.” James saw the woman’s eyes plead with Ma.

  “Thee’s well in this man’s hands,” Ma assured them. She gathered them together, like ducks in the yard. “God go with thee,” she said, tears in her eyes.

  When they were gone, she turned hard and dry again. “James, Rebecca, thee’s not to say a word of this to anyone.”

  “Not even to Pa?” Rebecca asked.

  Ma shook her head. “And not to the neighbors, not to thy friends, thy teachers, no one.”

  “A secret!” Rebecca squealed.

  “But Pa—” James began.

  “Pa and I are of the same mind on this slavery business. He’s doing it his way, I’m doing it mine. Swear.” She reached for a Bible on the hutch behind her. “Come, Rebecca, thee, too, James.”

  All three placed their hands on the Bible. “I swear,” James said, with a heavy chest.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Night of the Living Bones

  Of course, finding that secret chamber and the skeleton gave Dana’s life a little more glamour. She became a local hero at Thoreau Middle School on Monday, when everyone was buzzing about the Night of the Living Bones.

  “Who killed her?” kids at the lunch table wondered, and Mike Gruber acted like the chief detective on the case: “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Well, Mike, it’s not like there’s a killer running loose around Lawrence,” Dana reminded him. “The girl’s been dead about 135 years.”

  Ahn said, “She has a name, you know.” She bit into her taco, and meat flew everywhere.

  “You know her actual name?” Sally Benedetti asked.

  “Of course,” Ahn answered. “Because Dana and I named her. She’s Elvira Lincoln.”

  So then the whole seventh grade was talking about Elvira, with just a hint of awe, as though she were an eighth grader, someone ready to move into high school next year.

  “Wasn’t Elvira wearing any clothes?” Derek Boyles asked. “Not even underwear?”

  “I guess it all rotted off of her, like her flesh,” Dana explained. “They found a few scraps of cotton that looked like rags that have been through the washer about ten thousand times. And a little crock, and that’s all.” Not a word about the diary.

  “It is so sad, so sad,” Sally mused. “I mean, she died all alone in that room, no one to hold her hand.”

  Mike asked, “How do you know that? Maybe she was already dead, and someone dumped her in that room to hide the body. Maybe that’s why they can’t find any clothes. What do you think, Jeep?”

  “Yeah, Jeep, you haven’t said a word about Elvira,” all the kids said.

  Jeep Jeffreys slurped his canned peaches, while everyone waited for his reply.

  “Speak to us, oh Prophet Jeep, we’re hanging on every word.”

  Dana thought Jeep’s dark skin looked pale and dusty today. Maybe it was his new haircut—no more square Afro; now his hair was cut right up close to his scalp. Or maybe he didn’t like talking about dead bodies while he ate. They all stared at him a minute, until he shoved his tray across the table and said, “Get off my back.”

  “Hey, what’s ’a matter?” Derek asked. “What did I do?”

  “Not you, Derek, you’re not the center of the universe,” Mike reminded him. They watched Jeep dump his leftover green beans and stewed tomatoes in the trash and slide his tray onto the conveyer belt. “Hey, where ya going?” Mike yelled across the room.

  Jeep came back to the table and straddled the bench. “Okay, this pile of bones, this Elvira? She was a slave, right? So how come you think that’s so funny?”

  “Sorry, man,” they all murmured, but in another minute, they were bursting with more questions about Elvira—whether she was married, or dating anyone special, whether she’d been from a plantation in Georgia or Mississippi, whether she’d run off or been chased off, whether she’d died in the room, or been killed somewhere else and carried there.

  “This is sick,” Jeep muttered, and he went to the gym to shoot baskets.

  • • •

  Dana didn’t even tell her best friend, Ahn, about the diary. On the Night of the Living Bones, the police and city people hadn’t cleared out until ten o’clock. Then her parents were watching some 1930s movie downstairs; the black and white images flickered on the window opposite the TV.

  “I’m going to bed,” Dana said, forcing up a yawn. Upstairs she locked her door and finally had a chance to look at the small black book. The title page was yellowed, but the words were written in a tight, economical script, very black and straight:

  NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND: 1856 TO? by MILLICENT WEAVER

  Dana turned to page one.

  April 25, 1856—The first ones have been here, and if Thou hast been with them, they are well on their way to Canada. The eyes of that puny little boy were enough to convince me that I’m doing what I must, though Mr. Weaver would rightly disapprove. In all my years of matrimony, I’ve not kept secrets from Caleb, but I believe I am answering Thy call. Please, shelter James and Rebecca, as we are sheltering the Negroes. Lord, what have we gotten ourselves into?

  “Guys?” Dana’s parents were enraptured by the shades of black and white on the TV screen. Their robot arms moved from popcorn bowl to mouth. “Mom? Dad?” Her mother shoved the popcorn toward her, in an obvious attempt to silence her. “If I tell you I found something, you’ve got to promise to let me keep it, and you’ve got to promise not to act like parents.”

  “It’s not a lizard or a bat or anything, is it?”

  “No, Mom.” Dana grabbed the remote control and zapped the TV off.

  Her mother yelped, “Dana! It’s Bette Davis in Jezebel.”

  “And this is Dana Shannon in Keeping Evidence from the Police.” That got their attention. “I found a diary in the room.”

  “As I suspected,” her father said. “Let me see it.”

  Dana shook her head. “It’s hidden, so you can’t make me give it up—yet. Dr. Baxi said I should find some answers about the bones. I think the journal of Millicent Weaver will help.”

  Her mother said, “Honey, it’s not right to—”

  “Even if I can’t solve the mystery, I’ll turn the diary over to Dr. Baxi by July 1. Deal?”

  Her parents exchanged glances and sealed their own pact. Finally, her father said, “It’s more than a deal, Dana, it’s your solemn word.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Free-State Hotel

  May 1856

  “Pa, Pa!” Rebecca cried, trampling the new spring crocuses by the front door. Her feet sank into fresh mud, and she glanced back over her shoulder. “James, it’s Pa!”

  “Yes, I see.” He hung back on the porch with Ma, who was smoothing wisps of hair over her ears, sealing them put with fingers of spit. Women!

  Pa swung Rebecca around in a circle and gave James a manly hug, but it was Ma his eyes lit on. “Millicent
,” he whispered, his lips in her hair. They were as close as a foot to a boot, and James knew why, now. Jeremy and them, they’d discussed it all during the ten days Pa had been gone. Now James’s face felt flushed, and he looked away.

  Rebecca tugged at Pa’s coat. “Millicent, there’s a pup nipping at me. Has thee gone and brought a pup into the house?”

  “It’s me, Pa.”

  “Not a pup, Caleb. A prairie chicken. They wander in the house, just like that.”

  “It’s me!” Rebecca cried.

  “Hear it clucking, Mrs. Weaver?”

  “Faintly, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Pa-a-a!”

  He swooped Rebecca up in his arms again, scissored her on his hip, and had a good, hard look at James. “Son, are thy britches still reaching thy boots?”

  “Sir?”

  “Looks to me like thee’s grown two inches since I’ve been gone.”

  Lately James had noticed there was barely enough shirttail to tuck into his pants. Now he quickly checked to make sure the nail rip wasn’t showing.

  “Eats like there’s no tomorrow, Caleb. Thee should have seen him with his face in a gooseberry pie.”

  And that reminded Rebecca. “Oh Pa, we had company the night of the pie.”

  James saw his mother’s eyes throw a warning, but Rebecca never looked her way to catch it. So James squeezed her heel. “Ouch!”

  Pa set her down on the floor, and James sank to the floor beside her to grab hold of her arm if necessary.

  “Company?” Pa said.

  Back home company was nothing to make a speech about, but out here—

  “Mrs. Macon came by,” Ma said brightly. “Brought us some bread-and-butter pickles. Just a bit too sweet, if you ask me.” By now James had twisted Rebecca’s arm far enough behind her that she remembered to shut her trap, and Ma deftly separated them.

  “I’m right glad, Millicent, that thee’s finally making friends with the local ladies.”

  Which told James just how lonely Ma must be out here.

  Ma said, “But tell us, Caleb, do we have a state constitution?”

  “Not yet,” he said brusquely. “Four or five more months of haggling it out with words might do it. It’s thorny, Mil, not an easy thing. Now, I’d like to go out back and wash up. Son, are thy hands caked with the sweat of thy labors?”

  James looked at his hands. No need to wash too often, and he’d done no labor. But then he realized his pa meant to have a minute alone with him.

  At the washtub, Pa asked, “Who really came by the house, James?”

  James had never lied to his father; had kept a few things tucked inside his head, but had never out-and-out lied. “I’ve been busy with school, Pa, studying down at Macons’ and all. I’m not here much.”

  His father cleaned dirt out from under his nails, then splashed cool water on his face. Beads of water clung to his beard, and he shook them off like a dog shakes off a bath. “Thee must watch after thy mother and sister when I’m away, son.”

  “Yes sir.” James slapped a handful of water on his face.

  “And take care thee doesn’t wash off thy mustache, James.”

  • • •

  After Rebecca went to bed, Ma rocked and knitted a summer bonnet for her, while James drew windows of every which shape and size. They talked about the constitution business again, and the newly elected legislature.

  Pa filled every inch of his chair, with his legs stretched out in front of him and his heels digging into the clay floor. “Well, and it was a testy situation. Thee would have reeled, Millicent, if thee could have heard the deputy marshal announce that President Pierce intended for us all to be arrested if we took the oath of office.”

  James’s heart lurched at the thought of Pa and Dr. Robinson and the others wallowing in some jail cell.

  “Well,” Ma said, “I surely hope a little threat like that didn’t stop thee from doing what was right.”

  “A little threat, Mrs. Weaver? Franklin Pierce is president of the United States of America.”

  “And thee is a free man, Mr. Weaver, or thee wouldn’t be here tonight telling us this tale.”

  “True,” Pa said, deflated. “We took the oath of office. Had to, to be sure the free-state constitution would be recognized throughout the territory.”

  “Well, so it was a tempest in a teapot,” Ma said, with a bit of play in her voice. James looked up from his drawing, watched her knit another round on the bonnet before she said, “I’m just as pleased not to be taking plum cake to the jailhouse, Caleb.”

  “I’ve heard talk of some trouble,” Pa said. Ma’s needles clicked in the pause. “They’re saying the First U.S. District Court’s about to hand down a decision.”

  There was Pa, talking like a lawyer again. “Decision about what, Pa?”

  “Well, it has to do with abuses of the Fugitive Slave Law.” Ma knitted faster, racing across each row now. “No matter what we think about slavery, it’s illegal in this country to help slaves escape.”

  Ma tucked her needles under her arm. “Caleb Weaver, what they’re doing to those Negroes is immoral.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with you, Mrs. Weaver. I’m just saying there’s a law, and the law says that, much as we want to see Kansas a free state—we’re obliged to help slave owners get their property back.”

  “Property, indeed, Mr. Weaver!”

  “In the legal sense.”

  “Oh, piffle.”

  Now the silence was hot and stingy, and James’s voice cut a slice out of the thick air. “Pa, the Eldridge Brothers’ Free-State Hotel’s opening up next week, over on the corner of Massachusetts and Winthrop. I hear it’s so big, they can stable fifty horses out back.”

  Pa said, “Why, I’m told they’re already using the dining room as a barracks, stockpiling meat and such for the siege.”

  “Caleb,” Ma warned, but he ignored her.

  “General Lane’s out there on the prairie, drilling soldiers for battle.”

  Ma rapped her knitting needles like drumsticks. “Caleb Weaver, thee musn’t talk this way.”

  “Mrs. Weaver,” Pa said firmly, “thee must ready thyself. Our neighbors are preparing for war.”

  Ma’s face was furled with disapproval. In a voice barely above a whisper, she said, “Edna Macon and the other ladies are making cartridges out of lead and gunpowder smuggled in by their men. Doing this in their very kitchens.”

  Pa slid his rocking chair up to Ma’s, and she looked him right in the eye as she quoted, “ ‘They shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks.’ ”

  “And their rifles into Beecher’s Bibles.”

  “James Baylor Weaver! Bite thy tongue!”

  “Sorry, Ma.” But he wasn’t sorry. Every time he walked past Fort Necessity, the circular mud fortress at the foot of Massachusetts, and saw a sentinel of the Free State Army of Kansas Volunteers, James couldn’t help but cock his ear to catch the first thrilling report of gunfire. He remembered Grampa Baylor once saying, “Well now, James, bear in mind that a Quaker never raises his hand in wrath against another man.” “Yessir,” James had murmured. And Grampa Baylor had fixed his filmy eye on James. “Neither does he roll over and play dead, son. Time comes, thee will know what to do.”

  Would he, if it came right down to it?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  No Nancy Drews

  Ahn slept over on Friday night, and as soon as the parents were asleep, Dana and Ahn limboed under the crisscross barriers into the secret chamber. They wore mittens and socks, so they’d leave no fingerprints or footprints. Dana carried a penlight that cast a circle of light no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball.

  The plug of light matched Ahn’s crawling along the walls, under the cots, looking for anything the police might have missed. Ahn flipped the thin straw mattresses, sending up a cloud of dust that made her sneeze.

  “Sneeze quietly!” Dana hissed. “I wonder what this pottery thing is for.”

&nbs
p; “Chamber pot,” Ahn said simply. “In my country everyone keeps one by the bed in case you have to go in the middle of the night.”

  “But it’s empty.”

  “It’s had 135 years to dry up.”

  “Gross.”

  They looked for buttons that might have popped off a shirt, or a hairpin, an earring: Nothing but dust and crumbs of decayed fabric.

  “This is very discouraging,” Ahn said, twisting her long black hair into a rope. “There isn’t a single clue.”

  “I know.” Dana sat in the center of the room, leaning against the cot where Elvira had lain. The penlight darted around the room like a scared rat. Maybe there were rats in this room! “Nancy Drew would have turned up something.”

  “Who’s that? Did she go to your elementary school?” asked Ahn.

  “Oh, I forget that you haven’t been here forever. Nancy’s a hotshot teenage detective. I’ve read about eighty Nancy Drew mysteries.”

  “Oh yes, while I was sailing across the world,” Ahn said, as though the whole horrid experience had been a merry adventure. Actually, she had been the only one left to bury her parents in their village outside Saigon. Then she had come across the water in the bottom of a boat that wasn’t very seaworthy, to join her two brothers and two sisters. In fact, it was very much the way the Africans had come to the New World in the 1600s and 1800s, only Ahn came by choice. “I guess we’re no Nancy Drews,” Ahn said.

  “Shh, you hear something?” Dana turned out the penlight and put her ear to the wall. Footsteps! They each slid under a cot, breathing years of dust and mold and splintered wood. The parlor door opened, and there was a huge shadow in the backlight of the hall.