Steal Away Home

by Lois Ruby

  The tornado siren began its wail; the lights flickered. Dana grabbed a flashlight and her battery-operated radio and a bag of M&M’s and ran down the stone steps to the basement. Why did she have to be alone in the middle of a tornado?

  The basement was a gloomy canyon. Lightbulbs hung from the ceiling, casting a yellowish glare on the open wood studs that might someday support the walls of a classy poolroom. Now it all just looked raw and cavernous. The wind rumbled, thunder crashed, and the lightbulbs swayed. A three-legged table teetered and toppled as Dana bumped into it. Its chairs were piled lap-to-rear; she pulled one down to sit on and put her radio on another.

  The flashlight threw an eerie circle on the stone shelves where Millicent Weaver must once have stored her vegetables and strips of dried pumpkin and salt pork. It wouldn’t have been a basement then; cellar, they called it. Dana imagined Miz Lizbet Charles down here, her face as dark as the shadows. Maybe she hid some of the runaways here, with only candle glow to stab through the menacing darkness.

  Dana shuddered, flipped through the radio dials looking for music. But there were only the frantic reports of mobile weather units. “ … damage to a silo just west of … sighted a couple of cows hurled up against the side of a barn … the National Weather Service confirms reports of …” The voice went silent and was replaced by static. Dana changed stations. “Folks, if you’re out in your car, don’t try to outrun it. Abandon your car, find the nearest ditch or ravine… .”

  A cold sweat chilled Dana, even in this stuffy basement. She put her hand to a damp wall and imagined that she was in a dungeon. Giveaway clothes that hung from a hook became carcasses—venison, pork, human. She thought of the bones of Lizbet Charles and wondered if the flesh had rotted from them in this basement before she was sealed in the room upstairs.

  The radio crackled: “Breathe easier, folks, the National Weather Service tells us that the storm has passed over Lawrence and is headed for the Topeka area. We sustained only minimal damage, no reported deaths except for those two cows. Well, it sure shook us up. How about you, folks?”

  Dana turned off the radio and scurried upstairs. She threw on all the lights to dispel the jaundiced look in the kitchen. Outside, the sun was trying to break through, as Dana surveyed the damage. There were tree branches piled everywhere. Cars pocked from the hail. A telephone cable hanging in the fir tree. Water rushing down the slope of Tennessee Street and forming a river at the bottom. A car inching through that river, splashing water over its roof.

  Then the sun burst out—clear light in the peaceful silence after the storm, and the grass was suddenly a brilliant green. You had to squint to look at it.

  Dana heard her cousin Tonie’s voice in her head again: “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

  • • •

  “Ahn? Were you scared to death?”

  Ahn’s voice came through the phone thin and tremulous. “Oh Dana. My sisters and I crawled into bed and covered our heads until the storm was over. So scared!”

  “Oh, you get used to it,” Dana said casually. She’d never let Ahn know how terrified she’d been down in the basement alone. She thought of the carcasses, the damp stone wall. “I kept thinking what was it like for them.”

  “Millicent and Caleb and James and Rebecca?”

  “Imagine this kind of storm over the open prairie. No trees, no shelter, no radios.”

  Ahn whispered, “Oh Dana, what if Miz Lizbet was up in that room when the storm came. Maybe she died of fright.”

  “Not her. I don’t think she was afraid of anything. Remember how the journal says she left in the middle of the night for Missouri to bring out some more slaves? Think of it. A woman alone. I mean, I wouldn’t even go down to Massachusetts Street alone at night. And a runaway at that, with all those nasty slave catchers out looking for slaves to sell back to the old masters.”

  “And Indians,” Ahn said, for she’d just learned about all the Native Americans that had roamed the prairies, and she’d practiced pronouncing the strange names—Pawnee, Sioux, Kansa, Potawatomi.

  “And don’t forget the buffalo. How on earth did Miz Lizbet ever make it?”

  Ahn’s voice grew hard now: “People survive.”

  “But how did she live?”

  “More interesting,” Ahn said, “how did she die?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY - ONE

  Wild Indigo

  August 1856

  James cleaned the ashes out of the fireplace. “Thee’s been promising since June,” his mother reminded him. Rebecca slept hunched in the rocker, still weak after her bout with the fever. Seemed like everyone was sick. They had it over at the Macons’, and even Governor Robinson, who the proslavers said wasn’t the governor, was down with it. In town people were whispering “cholera,” and talking about the epidemic that swept through here not ten years before, wiping out whites and Negroes and Indians alike.

  But the runty Dr. Olney said, “Thee’s got nothing to stew about, folks. Believe me, I’m a product of the Harvard Medical College. It’s just the simple ague going around now.” He gave everyone quinine and told them to sleep and sweat it away. Tonight, when he’d come to check on Rebecca, he’d said, “She’s out of the woods. She’s over the crest.”

  Ma said, “Praise the good Lord.”

  “Yes sir, the child’s come through the dark of the night. She’s turned the corner. We’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I tell thee, that quinine’s a miracle drug. Wish I had the patent.”

  “I know thee has many calls to make tonight, and that sweet baby to get home to,” Ma said, urging him toward the door. She never mentioned the wild indigo tea, but he was barely out to the road when Miz Lizbet said with a snort, “Quinine, my left elbow! It was the roots did it.”

  Now Ma and Miz Lizbet sat at the table, working on Lizbet’s reading. She labored with writing the letters, because she was left-handed, and Ma could only show her how to work the right-handed way.

  It gave James a hearty satisfaction to see Miz Lizbet struggling.

  “I’ll never get it, Miz Weaver.”

  “Nonsense.” Ma stood up behind her and tried to guide her hand. “Maybe this is why thee has such a struggle sewing,” Ma said with a sigh.

  “Should never have been Gs invented,” Miz Lizbet muttered. “Too fancy and curly to write.”

  James stuck his head back into the chimney, and felt drops. “It’s raining. I sure can’t sweep up wet ashes.”

  “Work quickly, before they turn to mud,” Ma said. “And save every bit of the ash, son, because I’ll be leaching it in the fall and using the lye to make my soap.”

  In Boston they’d bought soap, fragrant as violets. Out here, Mrs. Macon was teaching Ma to make her own soap. A brown crock stood at the back of the stove, and into it went every drop of fat Ma could save. James couldn’t imagine washing in anything made from ashes and lard. How do you get clean when you smell like a pig?

  “The rain better stop,” Miz Lizbet said, “because I’m going on tonight.”

  James bumped his head on the stone in his excitement. Finally! He looked up and saw Ma’s disapproving eyes.

  “It’s threatening a storm, child.”

  Miz Lizbet slammed her copybook shut. “I have to leave tonight. Folks are expecting me.”

  “Thee will catch thy death,” Ma said, flattening the copybook open again. “Now, watch here. Thy Os must be as round as tiny moons.”

  “The minute it gets dark,” Miz Lizbet said. “My rucksack’s all packed.”

  “I urge thee to reconsider.”

  She shook her head. “There’s good moonlight to guide me, Miz Weaver, trusting the storm doesn’t cover it up, and by the time I get to those folks down in Missouri, there will be only a sliver of moon, so our trip back here will be safe.”

  “But, Lizbet—”

  “Amen,” she said firmly.

  • • •

  It wasn’t just one wagon or two. It was a whole train of t
hem that James watched come over the hill, looking like they’d fall headfirst into a ravine. Their white covers billowed in the Kansas wind like sails on the open sea. In fact, folks were calling these wagons prairie schooners. And they were headed right for the middle of town.

  James walked alongside the wagons and the beat-up-looking oxen that pulled them. Plumb in the middle of Massachusetts Street, the lead wagon stopped, all the others waiting behind like obedient ducklings.

  People began to tumble out of the wagons, stretching and yawning and turning their faces toward the sun. A rumpled-looking man bumped right into James. “Lawd, I never expected to stop in such a pretty town. This is just about the Garden of Eden.”

  “I expect thee’s been traveling a good long while, if thee thinks that!”

  “ ‘Thee?’ What are you, a Bible person?”

  “Quaker, sir. We’re Friends.”

  “Well sure we’re friends. Molly, hon, come over here and meet my new young friend.”

  Molly waddled from around the other side of the wagon. She proved to be a woman fixing to burst. James figured Lawrence would be adding one more name to its rolls before the day was out.

  “You got a doctor here?” Molly growled.

  “Yes, ma’am. Dr. Olney and Dr. Robinson, both, but Dr. Robinson’s usually away on government business.”

  “Best you be going for Dr. Olney,” the woman said, holding on to her heaving belly.

  Heart pounding, James ran for Dr. Olney’s house. “Dr. Olney, sir, there’s a woman over by the hotel who’s about to foal. Better come.”

  James led the doctor through the maze of wagons to Molly, who was as pale as the cover on the wagon, and clutching its ropes. Dr. Olney helped her up to the wagon, and they disappeared inside, while Molly’s husband paced.

  “I may look old, but I sure never had a baby before,” he told James. “Molly, she’s a good sport. She wanted to come along for the ride to Oregon, so I married her proper, after fifty-some years as a bachelor.”

  James meant to listen as the man, who called himself Jed Pryor, revealed fifty years of his personal history. But James’s attention was drawn to the house across the street—Bethany Maxwell’s house. Mr. Maxwell propped his door open and began carrying out trunks and boxes and barrels. One trip, he had a one-hundred-pound sack of flour flung over his back like a dead body. And he was loading everything onto one of the wagons.

  Then Bethany came out, with her cat curled in her arms. “Oh, hello, James Weaver.”

  “Is thy pa leaving?”

  “All of us,” she said morosely. She buried her face in the black fur of the cat.

  James swallowed around a lump the size of a goose egg.

  “My mother says no more. No more warring and no more bleeding Kansas and no more flooding, and no more lightning and thunder.”

  “Where’s thee going?” James asked, thunderstruck himself by how Bethany Maxwell’s hair was just the color of the cat’s fur, and her eyes like early dusk.

  “My Uncle Louis has come for us, from Cincinnati. We’re following the Oregon Trail.”

  “Thee’s bound for adventure,” James said bravely.

  “But it’s clear over the other side of the mountains. And I can’t take Trembles. You could keep him for me.” She thrust the cat into James’s arms. “He’s an outside cat. He won’t scratch at your door or anything rude like that.”

  Trembles scurried out of James’s grasp and wound himself around Bethany’s leg. She tried to ignore him. “We’re sleeping in the wagon tonight and leaving at first light.” She picked up a small satchel her father had left on the porch. “I can’t take much.”

  What was he supposed to say? Certainly not I’m gonna shrivel up and die without thee, though he suspected he might do just that.

  “I’ll remember you, James, over on the other side of the mountain, because I never met anybody who said ‘thee’ and ‘thy’ before.”

  “I can say ‘you’ and ‘your.’ ”

  “No, don’t! Now, take Trembles or I’ll cry right here on the street.” She slid away from the cat, and James grabbed him up and ran home.

  It wasn’t until he was inside with Trembles that he wondered just what kind of baby Molly and Jed Pryor would be taking the rest of the way on the Oregon Trail.

  • • •

  Pa pulled off his traveling boots. “It’s so far from place to place out here,” he said, settling into the biggest chair on the porch. “Thought I’d not make it home to sleep in my own bed tonight.”

  “Ma misses thee when thee’s gone away on business,” James said.

  Trembles came around the corner and hissed at Pa.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Just a cat. The Maxwells left him in our keeping. They went off to Oregon, while you were away.” James fiddled with a knife and a stick, making it look like he was idly whittling strips off the cottonwood branch, when he was actually carving little figures in it. If it turned out all right, he’d give it to Pa for a letter opener. And if it didn’t turn out all right, he could use it to stir up anthills.

  Ma brought them out some lemonade. “Hush thy voices so Rebecca doesn’t hear and clamber out of bed. I’m afraid we’ve spoiled her fiercely through her illness.”

  “I trust Simon Olney was a help?”

  “Oh yes,” Ma said quickly. “Came out three times.” Not a word about Miz Lizbet’s wild indigo tea. “The man is a veritable symphony of hackneyed expressions. He pronounced our Rebecca fit as a fiddle, tight as a drum, and snug as a bug in a rug.”

  Pa laughed as he polished his scuffed boots.

  This was James’s favorite time of the day, when the daylight finally gave in to dusk, and the sun was just a memory, a ripple of soft purples on the horizon. Ten more minutes, and it would be too dark to carve without bloodying his fingers, or worse, making a mess of the scarce wood. He asked, “Pa, did thee find Solomon?”

  “I did,” Pa said, letting out a deep sigh. “They have a different interpretation of the law down there.”

  “Thee wasn’t able to bring the man back?” asked Ma, taking up her knitting.

  “Well, Mrs. Weaver, they can’t deny I’ve got legal papers proving Solomon’s a free man, but they surely can take a long time looking those papers over.”

  Ma’s needles clicked furiously.

  There came a clattering of wagon wheels from up out of the sunset, and Ma stuffed her knitting behind her and folded her hands in her lap. James felt his heart leap. Eight days had passed since Miz Lizbet had left in the storm. Was this her promised load of Negroes?

  The wagon drew nearer, and James heard raucous laughter. He stood up to get a better look. One man held the reins, and the other stood up against the sunset and tilted a jug back toward his mouth. Wiping his face on his shirtsleeve, he shouted, “Ain’t never seen a sunset like this since I come back from Gay Paree.”

  “Hell, you ain’t never been to Paris,” the driver said, yanking the jug away. He took a good long slug of the contents, too. James smiled to himself, imagining what it must feel like to be so freely drunk.

  Pa muttered, “Scallywags. I’ll go head them off,” but Ma jumped up and said, “Caleb Weaver, this requires a woman’s firm hand. I’ll scold them as if I were their own mother. James, thee come out to greet them with me. He’ll protect me, Mr. Weaver. Thee’s had a long day of travel.”

  Pa seemed only too glad to sit back, as James followed Ma and her long swishing skirt down to the wagon.

  The driver doffed his sweaty hat at Ma. “Evening, missus. Don’t pay us no mind, we’ve been to the well.” The other man thought this was hilarious, and he bellowed with laughter.

  “Are thee drunk?” Ma hissed, snatching the jug away from the driver. She poured what was left on the ground. “James, poke around in the back of the wagon,” Ma said, and then the driver turned sober all of a sudden.

  “You Miz Weaver?”

  “I am.”

  “Well, I brought those bo
lts of cloth you ordered from down in Missouri. Real pretty calico. Gift from a Miz Charles.”

  “I simply can’t accept the gift, sir, generous as it is. We’re a proud people out here on the prairie.”

  James climbed carefully into the wagon, so as not to trample anything, or anyone. He lifted a corner of the buffalo robe and saw two eyes, which snapped shut right away. He jumped off the wagon.

  Ma said, in a voice much louder than usual, “I don’t mean to be inhospitable, but my husband’s up on that porch, and he’s weary from a day of travel, and I believe thee had best be on thy way. Perhaps someone further up the line can use that good cloth.”

  “Well, ma’am, I’ve got strict orders to deliver this load to you and no one but.”

  Ma came around to the far side of the wagon and whispered, “There’s two walls of a soddy just up the road, beside a stream. Not much water, this time of the year, but enough to refresh the horses. Drive thy wagon about until thee sees all the lights go out in our house. Thee can stay the night there, but be gone by the first sun, hear?”

  “Amen,” came a voice from under the buffalo robe.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - TWO

  Hush Puppies

  The whole gang waited for Jeep in front of the Eldridge Hotel at Seventh and Massachusetts. It was a sticky day, the kind where the sun hides behind weighty clouds.

  “Whew, there’s not even a breeze,” Sally complained, fanning herself with a Tiger Beat.

  Mike asked, “You guys want to go over to the quarry to swim?”

  “Too hot to swim.”

  “Not without suits.”

  “Michael!”

  Dana suggested, “We could go explore the old Edmund Wolcott Castle. It might be torn down by fall.”

  “Oh yeah,” Derek said, “that’s one of my personal favorite things to do—mess around a condemned building, machete our way through spiderwebs, get busted for trespassing. Go for it!”

  “No really, it’s a cool place,” Dana protested. “My dad’s head of the committee to save Wolcott Castle.”