People walked aboard with baskets and bundles in their arms. Sailors pulled at ropes and lifted rolls of heavy white cloth. Near the plank where the people came on board, the Captain stood scowling—his cap still pulled down over one eye and his moustache looking stiff and forbidding.
The girls kept their eyes on him. Two large men shoved their way up the plank and approached him. They could be the sheriff and the slave hunter. Julilly and Liza didn’t know. They had never seen them before. The men spoke to the Captain, waving their arms in his face and pacing impatiently up and down beside him. They seemed like horses pawing the ground, wanting some kind of action. But the words they spoke were lost to Liza and Julilly in the wind and the splashing noise of lapping water.
The Captain shook his head. He threw his arms into the air as though in despair. He walked toward the thin stairway. The big men followed.
“They are going to search the cabins, Liza!” Julilly gasped, realizing just how lucky their escape had been. “We’re gonna get to Canada, if we’ve got to hang onto the bottom of this boat and get pulled across Lake Erie.” Julilly was angry now. What right had these men to keep chasing them right up to the border, as if they were two runaway dogs? She and Liza were not going to be slaves no more.
It was night now. The grey fringes of day-light had slipped from the sky. Dark clouds foamed and raced above the Mayflower. Then they parted and a half-moon dazzled the schooner with yellow light. The North Star shone above with radiant steadiness. A bell clanged and the boat swayed impatiently as though eager to break away from the shore.
The Captain and the two large men popped out of the stairway. They heaved and puffed and ran to the entrance plank. They shook their fists in the Captain’s face, but he shoved them onto the plank and waved good-bye.
The Mayflower turned. It swung around into the wind. The sails high above began cutting through the water.
“I feel that I’m flyin’ through the sky just like those sails.” Liza hugged Julilly as they both pushed a wider opening in the canvas so they could see more of the outside.
The joy that Julilly felt was so intense that there was pain around her heart.
“Liza,” Julilly said finally, “Mammy Sally is watchin’ that same North Star. I’ve got to keep myself from hopin’ too much, but I’m hopin’ that it’s led her to freedom, too.”
Liza began feeling about for the bundle of food and the flask of water. The girls ate and drank all of it. They drew the blankets close around them and watched the billowing sails catch the rushing wind.
Without wanting to, they slept in the hollow shelter of the small life-boat. When the Captain found them later, peaceful and warm, he left them to rock through the night and be refreshed for the morning.
A CRISP, BRIGHT MORNING came quickly with thin, white frost powdering the deck. The air was strong with fresh fish smells. They mixed with the land smells of pine and pungent walnut bark and fertile earth still warm from summer. The waves on Lake Erie lapsed into gentle ripples. Sails were pulled in and the Mayflower drifted ashore.
Julilly and Liza woke with the sudden stillness of the schooner’s landing. They grasped each other’s hand for comfort, at once remembering the Mayflower, Lake Erie, and their nearness to Canada.
They pushed up the canvas on their little boat and the bright sun showered over them. The Captain ran toward them shouting with his trilling r’s and upturned sentences.
“Ahoy.” He waved for the girls to join him. “All passengers ashore.”
He grabbed the girls by their arms and ushered them down the plank to the shoreline. He pointed to rows of tall, silent trees and the long, bleak shore.
“See those trees,” he shouted. “They grow on free soil.”
Julilly and Liza ran down the plank and jumped to the ground.
“Canada?” they cried together.
The Captain nodded.
Liza dropped to her knees. She spread out her arms and kissed the ground. “Bless the Lord, I’m free!” she cried.
Julilly stood as tall and straight as she could. She pulled the cap from her head and held her head high. There was no longer any need to hide her black skin. She was Julilly, a free person. She was not a slave.
“Thank you, Lord,” she said aloud. She filled her lungs as full as she could with the air of this new free land. No one else was near them except the Captain, who was wiping tears from his eyes and blowing his nose. But he seemed nervous and jumpy and kept watching each passenger who walked from the schooner.
“Ye are safe now,” he said warmly to the girls, “and it does me heart good to have brought ye here.” Then he lowered his voice. “But ye must remember that I must go back to Ohio this very day. I can’t be getting myself arrested for helping slaves escape to freedom, and I can’t be revealing that I’m a ‘conductor’ on the Underground Railway, even though my part of the train goes on top of the water.” He laughed suddenly.
Julilly looked at the Captain with new admiration. In her great joy to be standing on the soil of Canada, she had forgotten how this man was risking his job and maybe his life to bring them across Lake Erie on the Mayflower.
“Liza and I will never forget how you and all the people of the Underground Railway helped us, Captain,” Julilly said. She wanted to give him something, but her bundle was limp and empty.
Liza seemed not to hear them. She was still kneeling on the ground praying.
“I’m giving ye a little money from Mr. Ross,” said the Captain, awkwardly shoving some paper bills into Julilly’s hand. “Far down the shore there is a coloured man with a cart waiting to take ye and your friend to the town of St. Catharines. Mr. Ross arranged it. Your cousin Lester has a job in that town and he’ll take care of ye for a bit.”
Julilly looked quickly down the long stretch of rocks and sand that ran beside the lapping blue water of the great Lake Erie, and, sure enough, there was a man with a cart waiting beside one of the roads.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE CAPTAIN TURNED SWIFTLY and ran back to his schooner.
Small clusters of people gathered here and there along the quiet shore. But Julilly felt no need to be greeted by anyone. She began to hum softly as the words rang in her head, Swing low, sweet chariot.
Coming for to carry me home…
Julilly walked toward Liza and shook her gently on the shoulder.
“You can’t just sit here prayin’ for the rest of your life, Liza,” Julilly laughed with a full, strong voice. “We’ve a ways to go yet and there’s a man right up there waitin’ to take us there.”
Liza seemed dazed. But she stood without help from Julilly and the two of them walked silently round the shoreline toward the coloured man, whose wagon was hitched to an aged brown horse.
As they neared him, he seemed to recognize them as his passengers, and stood waving them toward him.
Liza drew back. “We’d best hide in those bushes, Julilly, until it’s dark. What’s he mean, lettin’ everyone see him wavin’ at us.”
“Liza.” Julilly shook her friend again. “We are in Canada, and we are free, and free means not havin’ to hide no more.”
Liza stopped in shocked amazement as though this new idea struck her like a bolt of lightning.
“You is right, Julilly,” Liza said and her back seemed to straighten a little with almost no expression of pain on her face. “We can walk right up to that cart and climb on board and lift up our heads, just like the white people always do.”
The kindly brown-skinned driver climbed down and held out both his hands. He was tall and strong and his hair bushed out from his head like a grey and black speckled frame.
“I’m Ezra Wilson,” he said, smiling as though the sun had lighted his face with a spark. “Massa Ross sent word you were comin’ and Lester said I was to bring you right to him in St. Catharines.” He reached for Julilly’s hand and then Liza’s and held them tight.
The girls were speechless, until Liza’s sullen eyes suddenly sparkled.
“I was sort of expectin’ that Queen Victoria herself might be marchin’ up and down this shore when we arrived,” she said, “but I think, Ezra Wilson, that you look just as good.”
Ezra Wilson chuckled, but continued to hold their hands.
“I know how you feel,” he nodded quietly. “I came here last year, just like you, at the time of the harvest.”
“We’d best not talk now.” The tall, strong man turned from them and began to busy himself with the fresh straw and blankets in the back of the cart. “It’s a two-day trip to St. Catharines. We’ll have plenty of time to say a good many things by then.”
The girls climbed into the cart and settled themselves on the straw. It was too warm for the blankets now. The morning sun had a soothing warmth. There was a burnished glow about it, like the ripened skin of a red apple.
Ezra Wilson sat above them and flicked the reins for the horse to go. The cart began to jog up a steep road, lined on either side by tall, green pines.
The two days of travel along the country roads of Upper Canada with kindly Ezra Wilson were a time of peace and quiet joy for Julilly and Liza.
At first they covered themselves with the blankets when other people came their way. But no one stopped them, and no one shouted, and when they came to the small towns and were hungry, they walked into the stores and bought food with the money Massa Ross had given them. At night, when the sun disappeared, they felt the hard cold of this new north country. Then the blankets warmed them and they were never afraid.
On the second morning the leaves on the trees beside their jogging cart were yellow-gold. Ezra Wilson stopped and spread a blanket beneath them and they ate their lunch.
“It’s like heaven here,” Liza murmured softly.
Ezra Wilson stood up abruptly.
“No, it isn’t heaven,” he said curtly, “and I’ve got to tell you how it is.” He looked at the girls a long time and then continued. “We coloured folks in St. Catharines work hard, very hard. But we’ve got food to eat and most of us have a warm, dry place to live.”
Julilly looked at him with apprehension. What else did he have to tell them to let them know that Canada wasn’t just a place with yellow-gold leaves?
Ezra continued to stand. His face was stern but he didn’t raise his voice.
“We’ve found jobs,” he said, “but none of us can read, and all the white folks can.”
“Read?” Julilly asked, never having thought in all her life that she might ever learn to read.
“It seems, Liza and Julilly, that the white folks don’t want us in their schools.” Ezra’s face grew sad. There’s a St. Paul’s Ward School in St. Catharines for the coloured and a St. Paul’s Ward School for the whites; and the white school’s got more books and more paper and more desks, and a good strong building.”
“But can we go to school and learn to read?” Julilly’s eyes grew round with wonder.
“Would they let somebody like me come?” Liza lifted herself painfully to look up into the face of tall Ezra Wilson.
“I’m learnin’.” Ezra smiled down at her and rubbed his grey-flecked hair. “Now I guess I’ll just end all this warnin’ talk by sayin’ that I made up my mind that salt and potatoes in Canada are better than pound-cake and chickens in a state of worry and suspense in the United States. Now, let’s eat lunch.”
While he talked, Julilly remembered what Massa Ross had told them a long time ago in Mississippi— that escaping into Canada would be hard and that living in Canada would be hard, too. But it didn’t seem to hurt to remember this. She and Liza could work, and salt and potatoes weren’t bad for eating when no slave owner was around to threaten or whip.
One night Ezra Wilson talked about St. Catharines … how Lester worked there as a porter in the Welland House Hotel where a special pipe brought magic mineral water to all the guests. He told how former slaves helped to build the hotel, and how many of them worked there now.
“It’s a grand place.” Ezra spread his long arms wide and high. “A big porch runs along the front of it, and all the fine people sit there rockin’ away in their chairs.”
Julilly and Liza were excited and yet worried about arriving in the town. They talked continually to one another in the jogging wagon. How would it be to live in a town and not be a slave? How would Lester look? If only Adam had lived to welcome them, too.
Julilly yearned to ask Ezra Wilson if he had ever seen or heard of a handsome black woman called Mammy Sally. But she didn’t dare. As long as no one had heard of her, there was always hope that she would come to Canada. But if they did know, and something bad had happened to her, Julilly wanted to put off the knowing of it as long as she could.
On the morning of the third day, Ezra told them that the town they were coming to was St. Catharines. At first it looked like the other villages they had travelled through. There were large and small houses, mostly built of brick. Trees and shrubs and flowers grew everywhere. But on the streets of St. Catharines were many black folks just like them. When they came to the part of the town where the shops were they saw many more.
“They aren’t dressed fancy,” Liza said to Julilly, “but they aren’t wearin’ rags.”
At the end of the street they saw a large two-storey building with a wide porch running across the front of it—the Welland House Hotel. Ezra pulled in the reins to slow the horse. In front of the hotel stood a light-skinned coloured man with freckles. He wore a tight suit that buttoned up the front with shining gold buttons.
“It’s Lester,” Julilly shouted. She jumped from the wagon and ran toward him.
Lester grabbed both her hands in his and looked at her fondly. Julilly searched his face. Lester was well and content, but the anger was still in his eyes and the pride was still in his high-held head. Julilly was glad. The beatings and chains hadn’t crushed him down like a snake.
Together they saw Liza trying to crawl over the back of the wagon. Lester ran toward her and picked her up in his arms. The three of them stood together for a moment in a tight happy circle. Tall, kind Ezra Wilson joined them. Then Lester placed Liza gently on the dirt road beneath them. As he did so, he glanced toward a door at the far end of the Hotel.
“You’ll want to see her right away in the kitchen, Julilly,” Lester said.
“Her? Kitchen?” Julilly was puzzled. Was it someone wanting to give her a job in the kitchen?
“It’s a surprise I planned for you, Julilly,” Lester said. “I made Ezra promise not to tell.” Angry, hostile Lester became surprisingly sheepish.
A woman opened the far back door. Julilly stared. She was tall and dark skinned with a white kerchief about her head. But her hair was grey. Her face was wrinkled. She was old. Then the woman came toward them—limping, but with long, full strides.
“Mammy Sally,” Julilly cried and ran into her mother’s outstretched arms.
“Child, child.” Mammy Sally sang the words over and over again.
Finally she held Julilly at arm’s length. Her eyes were radiant.
“June Lilly, you have grown.” She looked again with grave concern. “You have become a woman.”
Julilly didn’t hear. Being with Mammy Sally again was like shifting a hundred-pound sack of cotton from her back and just taking on a two-pound load instead. But it also filled her heart with such a joy she wanted to shout and sing. Instead, Julilly put a strong arm around her mother to support her.
“How did you know, Mammy, how did you know to come out that door and meet me?” she asked.
“Land, child, didn’t Massa Ross tell you I was here, or did Lester keep it a secret from him too?” Mammy Sally laughed and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Julilly remembered Liza. She led her mother to the hunched, thin girl who stood quietly on the road.
“Liza came with me,” Julilly said simply to Mammy Sally. “We are like sisters.”
Mammy Sally touched Liza gently on the head. “You gonna live with us, Liza. I’m buyin’ us a l
ittle house.” She stood proud and tall before all of them. “We’ll walk there now.”
They all started walking down the wide dirt road—Liza, Julilly, and Mammy Sally in the lead with Lester and Ezra behind them.
“We are free and we are together.” Mammy Sally almost sang the words. Then she paused and looked long and joyfully at the strangely dressed girls beside her.
She started walking again and said, “Freedom isn’t easy. We black folks can’t read and we can’t write and the white people in St. Catharines don’t want us in their schools…We are poor, but we are buildin’ us a church and buildin’ us a school. We are poor, but we get paid for the jobs we do. We are poor, but some of us are buildin’ houses on the land we own. We are poor, but none of us is slaves.”
Mammy Sally’s words became a song. There was a rhythm and a rising cadence to each new line. They all began marching toward a grove of tall, green pines.
Julilly glanced at her mother’s face. It had deep wrinkles. The hair that shone beneath her kerchief was powdery white with specks of grey. There were scars on Mammy’s neck. She’d been lashed with a whip. She limped when she walked. But her head was high and her voice rang with courage and deep joy.
Julilly put a strong arm around her mother to support her. She pulled Liza along with her other hand.
Mammy Sally needed her. Liza and Lester needed her. She was growing up. There was a lot for her to do in this great new land of freedom.
MR. ALEXANDER ROSS
Alexander Milton Ross, a naturalist and physician, was born on December 13, 1832, at Belleville, Upper Canada, and died in Detroit, Michigan, on October 27, 1897.
In undertaking this mission to help the slaves to freedom I did not disguise from myself the dangers I would most certainly have to encounter, and the certainty that a speedy and perhaps cruel death would be my lot in case my plans and purposes were discovered.1
Alexander M. Ross
An outspoken abolitionist … was Alexander Milton Ross….In 1855, when he was 23, he decided upon an active career of running fugitives from the deep South to Canada. Ross made at least five trips to the southern states, posing as a birdwatcher; and in five years he was instrumental to the escape of 31 or more blacks…John Greenleaf Whittier dedicated one of his poems to Ross.2
Underground to Canada Page 11
