The Lost Quilter

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  And froze at the sight of a small boy standing on the whitewashed porch.

  He stared at her, openmouthed and motionless.

  For a long moment she stared back in silent panic. “Why, hello there, young man,” she finally said, trying her best to sound like a woman of quality. “I hope it weren’t no trouble that I refreshed myself at your pump.”

  The boy stared.

  Joanna took a step backward, her bare toes squishing in the mud. “I’ll be on my way now.”

  “Pa,” the boy shouted. Joanna stumbled backwards and broke into a run. “Ma! Come quick!”

  She bolted around the corner of the house, straight into the solid form of a man. The impact knocked her to the ground, and as she scrambled backwards away from him, he recovered from his surprise and quickly caught up with her. He seized her around the arm and lifted her kicking and struggling to her feet as the boy continued his cry of alarm.

  “Settle down, now,” the man said as Joanna frantically tried to peel his fingers from her arm. “Settle down.”

  Behind him, the front door burst open and a small, fair-haired woman stepped out. “Mercy, Miles,” she cried. “What on earth—”

  “I found her, Ma.” The boy had come running from the back of the house. “She was drinking at the pump.”

  “What’s your name?” The man closed his beefy hands around her upper arms. His voice was gentler than his grip. “What are doing out here, all alone?”

  With a sob, Joanna ceased struggling, knowing she would never break the man’s iron hold. Her gaze fell upon the boy, who had dared draw a few paces closer and stared back at her with eager curiosity. She looked away.

  “For heaven’s sake, Miles, the poor thing’s terrified.” The fair-haired woman descended the steps and lifted her skirts over her shoe tops as she crossed the yard. A deep crease appeared between her brows as she inspected Joanna, her sure gaze taking in Joanna’s bare feet, her soiled clothing, her matted hair, and the burn scar on her face.

  “What’s your name?” The man gave her a little shake, but such was his strength that it rattled her teeth. When she did not respond, he shook his head and said to his wife, “I’ve never seen her before. Do you think she’s simple? Maybe she came in to town for the celebration and wandered off from her family.”

  “Don’t be silly, dear,” said the woman. “She’s colored. She’s on the run, no doubt, or why else would she drink from the pump instead of knocking on the door like decent folk?”

  The man studied Joanna, perplexed. “This here’s a white woman. Look at her skin. She’s as white as me.”

  His wife laughed. “And you’re as dark as an Indian yourself, in the summertime.”

  He shook his head, still disbelieving. “Maybe she’s one of them Italians. They put their women out to work in the fields.”

  “Look at her hair. She’s colored.” The woman took Joanna’s chin in hand and turned her face to examine her scar. “My, my. She’s been ill-treated, this one. No wonder she ran off.”

  “Are you a runaway, girl?” the man asked.

  “I am colored,” Joanna said. “But I’m no runaway. My name is Constance Wright. I’m a freedwoman from the Elm Creek Valley in Pennsylvania. My husband is Abel Wright, a freeborn colored man who owns his own land.”

  “How’d you find yourself here in Maryland?” the man asked.

  Maryland. A slave state.

  Joanna took a deep breath. “Some slave catchers passed through our town. When they couldn’t find the runaways they were after, they snatched me instead. I told them I was no runaway, but they didn’t care. They say they can sell me anyway.” She began to sob, real tears, for herself and her dream of freedom, slipping away. “My husband don’t even know where I am. My two boys probably think I’m dead.”

  The husband and wife exchanged a look. After a moment, the man’s grip relaxed. “Come on,” said the wife, taking Joanna’s arm. “Let’s get you inside and get some food into you. Johnny, go fill the bathtub.”

  “But it’s not even Saturday,” the boy protested.

  “It’s not for you. Go.” She pointed to the doorway, and Johnny ran off. “My name is Ida Mary Dunbar. Mrs. Miles Dunbar.” She beckoned for Joanna to follow her into the kitchen, where she pointed to a wooden bench next to a table and indicated that Joanna was to sit. “We’ll have to get word to your husband so he can come fetch you.”

  “My husband can’t leave the children, or the farm,” said Joanna. “Thank you kindly, but I’ll make my own way home.”

  “You can’t go on foot, not all the way to Pennsylvania.” Ida Mary took a loaf from the breadbox and cut two thick slices, which she buttered and placed on the table. “Tomorrow my husband can take you into town. You could send a telegram to your husband and ask him to wire money for train fare.”

  Joanna forced herself to take small, ladylike bites of the bread. “I don’t want to put your man to any trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble.” Ida Mary set a tin cup of milk and a dish of sweet pickles on the table. “But you can’t go like that. None of my dresses would fit you, but we can wash the one you’re wearing.” She glanced at Joanna’s feet. “You’ll need shoes. My neighbor’s daughter is about your size. She might have an old pair that will do until you get home.”

  “Please don’t tell anyone I’m here. If those slave catchers find out…”

  Ida Mary’s eyebrows rose. “All right, then. I’ll tell her my feet are swelling from the heat and my own shoes pinch me. That’s no lie.”

  Joanna thanked her and finished every crumb of the meal. She could not remember ever tasting anything so fine. Afterward, Ida Mary sent her son to the neighbor’s for the shoes, and her husband went outside so Joanna could bathe in the copper tub. Hidden from the rest of the kitchen by a white bed sheet draped over a string, Joanna sank blissfully into the cool water, letting exhaustion and the heat of the day dissolve from her body. The water eased the soreness in her engorged breasts. Soon, unless she made it back to her son, she would have no milk for him.

  Closing her eyes against tears, she let her head fall back against the rim of the tub, praying that her son was safe, that when she returned to Elm Creek Farm, she would find him there. Perhaps even now Gerda held him, snuggled within the soft folds of the Feathered Star quilt Joanna had sewn for him as she awaited his birth. Perhaps Gerda whispered stories of his brave mother, promising to find her and help them make their way to freedom in Canada. Gerda would not let her son forget her.

  Her hopes restored, Joanna rested and planned, her stomach almost unpleasantly full. She would see her son again. When night fell, she would fill her pockets with food and set out on foot, and by the time the Dunbars woke, she would be far away.

  On the other side of the draped sheet, Ida Mary had set out an old cotton shirt and trousers belonging to her husband, as well as some undergarments that Ida Mary must have worn when she was expecting little Johnny, because they surely would not fit her now. The soft cotton undergarments fit loosely but they would do. After Joanna rolled up the pant legs and sleeves and pinned the waist of Miles’s borrowed clothes, she felt comfortable for the first time since she left Elm Creek Farm. Ida Mary had washed Joanna’s garments while she bathed, and by the time Johnny returned with the shoes, her dress and underclothes were hanging on the line. Though the sun shone brightly, the air was thick and humid, and Joanna doubted they would dry by nightfall. She would have to don them nevertheless. It was sin enough that she planned to steal the Dunbars’ food. She would not add the theft of clothing to her crime.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” called Ida Mary from the kitchen, and Joanna realized that she had been in constant motion since stepping out of the bath, moving from the kitchen to the front room and back, peering out each window, searching the road and the distant trees. “Even if those men track you down here, they can’t take you against your will, not if you’re a freedwoman.”

  Joanna forced herself to stop pacing. “That di
dn’t matter to them back in Pennsylvania. I think it’ll matter even less here.”

  “Perhaps they didn’t believe you when you told them you weren’t a runaway.” Ida Mary gave a little laugh and tied on an apron. “I confess I’m having some difficulty believing you myself.”

  Joanna went cold, but she forced herself to appear calm. “If even good people like you and your husband doubt me, I can see why men of low character like them slave catchers wouldn’t believe a word I say.”

  “You must admit that it does sound a bit fanciful, two men willfully breaking the law by taking a free woman into slavery.”

  Joanna forced a smile and gave an acknowledging nod, and spared a glance out the window. She spotted Miles working in the barn, Johnny at his elbow, likely getting in the way rather than helping. She could not see the road from that window, but she dared not arouse Ida Mary’s suspicions by resuming her anxious lookout. Joanna knew there was nothing fanciful about what she claimed Peter and Isaac had done. Slave catchers were lazy folk, and to them, one colored person was as good as another if they couldn’t find the one they sought. A white person’s word that a free Negro was really an escaped slave was all that the law required. No white lawman would believe a colored person’s protests that the slave catchers had lied.

  “Your speech is very much like that of the colored folk hereabouts,” Ida Mary remarked. “I should have expected you to sound…different. More like a northerner.”

  “My mother was from Virginia. I expect I sound like her.”

  Ida Mary nodded as if her curiosity was satisfied. “Sometimes cooking three meals a day can be so tiresome,” she said, laying a bunch of green-tufted carrots on the cutting board and taking a knife from a drawer.

  “May I help?”

  “How kind of you to offer. There’s a way you can make the time pass more agreeably.” Ida Mary nodded toward the front room. “My book of psalms is on the knickknack shelf in the parlor. Would you read to me while I work?”

  “Of course.” It was a test, but not a very good one. Everyone knew slaves were not permitted to learn to read, but even some white folks couldn’t. Joanna went to the front room and found a small book bound in green leather. Thanks to Gerda and her lessons, Joanna would pass Ida Mary’s test, but would she be safe even then? If Ida Mary was suspicious enough to test her, Joanna should not wait until nightfall to flee. She should set down the book and keep walking, right out the front door. But her clothes, still damp on the line, and the concealing darkness, and food for the journey—she could not leave without them. And the wheat field separating her from the woods—Miles Dunbar would spot her as she crossed it, and he could easily overtake her even if she ran as she had never run before.

  She had no choice but to wait until the family slept to make her escape.

  She returned to the kitchen, book in hand. “Which psalm would you care to hear?”

  “The thirty-second,” Ida Mary replied, watching her carefully.

  Joanna nodded, found the page, and read aloud, trying to sound like a northerner rather than a slave out of Virginia. The prayer, full of longing, stirred up memories of prayer meetings at Greenfields, sitting on the dirt floor of a slave cabin and raising her voice in a song of worship, a plea for deliverance. And the Lord had heard her. After so many years of suffering, the Lord had opened the door for Joanna, but Anneke had closed it.

  Joanna read the final verse with tears in her eyes. She blinked them away and looked up from the book to find Ida Mary regarding her. “It’s my favorite, too,” Ida Mary said. “I can see you’re a good Christian woman. You needn’t fear that any low slave catcher is going to keep you from your husband and children. They’ll have to get through my Miles, and there aren’t many men foolhardy enough to take him on.”

  “You’re very kind,” said Joanna, praying that she would not have to put Ida Mary’s staunch promise to the test.

  Before long, Miles and Johnny washed up and came in for supper. After helping Ida Mary set out fried chicken, succotash, fresh baked bread, and pickled cucumbers, she hesitated before accepting the seat Ida Mary offered her on the bench across the table from Johnny. She had never sat at a table for a meal with any white folks but the Bergstroms. Smiling to hide her discomfort, she took her place and complimented Ida Mary on the meal.

  “It’s our own Independence Day celebration.” Ida Mary filled their cups with lemonade, set down the pitcher, and took her seat at the foot of the table. “My husband is too industrious to take a day of rest except on the Sabbath. Since we couldn’t go into town, we’ll have our picnic—” Suddenly she fell silent, frowning.

  At the same moment, Joanna heard the distant baying of dogs. Her stomach lurched and she bolted upright. “I got to go now.”

  Miles rose and went to the window. Over his shoulder Joanna saw Peter and Isaac emerging from the woods on horseback, accompanied by two other men on foot. One was pulled along by three leashed bloodhounds. The dogs led the men straight across the wheat field to the pump where Joanna had drank and washed the mud from her hands and feet. Isaac pointed somewhere out of sight, and Joanna knew he had seen her dress on the clothesline.

  Her head spun. She gripped the edge of the table to keep from falling.

  “Now, don’t you fret,” Ida Mary said briskly. “We’ll get this sorted out. You won’t come to any harm.”

  “Are those the men who took you?” asked Miles.

  Unable to speak, Joanna nodded. She sank down heavily on the bench, her thoughts churning. What now? If she ran out the front door, she would be spotted even if the men stayed out back, and the dogs would be upon her before she could reach the distant trees. She was trapped.

  Someone pounded on the back door. “Open up, Dunbar,” a man called. “We don’t want trouble.”

  “You stay put,” Miles ordered Joanna. He opened the back door off the kitchen but kept his hand firmly on the latch, barring entrance to the two men who stood on the porch. The bloodhounds yelped and slavered at their feet, knowing their quarry was near.

  Miles’s frame nearly filled the doorway, forcing the two men to crane their necks to peer into the house. The man holding the dogs nudged the other as his gaze came to rest on Joanna.

  “Wilson. Boyle,” Miles’s deep voice boomed. “What brings you fellows out our way?”

  “These two men say their slave’s run off, and Boyle’s hounds led us here.” Wilson indicated Joanna with a jerk of his head. “From the look of things, I reckon they earned themselves some nice, juicy bones.”

  “This unfortunate woman is no runaway,” said Ida Mary, standing between Joanna and the men. “Her name is Constance Wright. She’s a free woman from Pennsylvania, abducted by these unscrupulous men when they could not find their rightful quarry.”

  Wilson removed his hat. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but they tell a different story.”

  “That there’s her dress hung out to dry,” bellowed Isaac from the yard. “Bring her out or we’ll come in and get her!”

  Miles stood a head taller than the largest of the other men, and a single skeptical look was enough to make Wilson and Boyle shift uncomfortably on the doorstep. “Look, Dunbar, they swear she’s a runaway,” Boyle said apologetically, yanking hard on the dogs’ leashes to keep them from bolting into the house. “We won’t let them set foot in your home if you say so, but you should hear them out.”

  “We don’t care to listen to liars and scoundrels,” said Ida Mary.

  Joanna’s heart pounded and her palms were slick with sweat. Her thoughts darted, desperate to find an escape, but came to a crashing halt at the sight of Peter at the doorway. “Take a look at this,” he said, reaching past Wilson and Boyle to thrust a crumpled sheet of paper at Miles.

  A glimpse was enough. Joanna recognized the handbill Josiah Chester had printed up after her escape, the one describing her unmistakable scar. She had seen the handbill before, at Elm Creek Farm. Gerda Bergstrom had torn down one that had been posted outside a sho
p in town.

  Miles studied the paper before holding it out to his wife. As she read it, she grew very still. She drew herself up, mouth pursed, and with a flick of her wrist, she beckoned the men inside. “Take her.”

  Joanna went cold. “Please, ma’am—”

  “Be quiet, Constance, or whatever your name is,” Ida Mary snapped as Wilson and Peter entered the kitchen. “You lied to us. Freedwoman, indeed. You’re nothing but a runaway and a liar.”

  “Ma?” Wide-eyed, Johnny clambered off his bench as the two men circled the table.

  Joanna darted into the front room, but before she reached the door, Peter seized her around the waist and brought her to the floor, his weight crushing the air out of her. He stank of liquor. She gasped for breath as he and Wilson pulled her to her feet. They wrestled her out the front door and around the back of the house, where Isaac waited with the rope. Kicking, clawing, Joanna fought to free herself, but the men held on, cursing her, and all too soon her hands were bound and the other end of the rope was lashed to Isaac’s saddle. She threw one desperate, pleading look to the Dunbars, who stood at the back door watching the scene unfold.

  “Don’t forget her clothing,” said Ida Mary.

  Grumbling, Isaac snatched dress and shift down from the clothesline and stuffed them into his saddlebag. She saw money change hands as Peter paid Wilson and Boyle and thanked them for their services. Then the slave catchers mounted their horses and set off for the road south, pulling a stumbling Joanna along behind. A cry of anguish and pain escaped her throat; she tripped and fell, but the horses did not slow their pace. A wrenching pain shot through her knee as she struggled to regain her footing. She collapsed and cried out as the horses dragged her through the dirt and gravel. Swearing, Isaac reined in his horse. “Get up,” he shouted, tugging sharply on the rope that bound Joanna’s hands. “Get up now unless you want a beating.”