Starting from Seneca Falls

by Karen Schwabach

  But first she had to get down.

  She got armloads of hay, and dropped them into the farmyard below. She hoped this would cushion her fall.

  Then she turned around, got down on her hands and knees, and squirmed backward out the hayloft window. She hung by her hands.

  She let go.

  Her feet hit the ground so hard her teeth rattled. She fell over backward. The hay hadn’t helped at all. She lay still on the ground, the wind knocked out of her.

  She got to her feet, shakily. Nothing seemed to be broken.

  At least the rain had stopped. The sky had cleared. The moon was a tiny sliver in the sky, but there was light from the stars, and she was able to pick her way along the wagon track, out to the road.

  She remembered the way they had brought her. She turned onto the road, and walked until she came to the Turnpike, which was just a dirt road itself, corduroyed with logs in the low, muddy places.

  From here she knew her way to Seneca Falls. She knew the Turnpike went straight to the toll bridge—the one that the Kigleys had avoided when they’d brought Bridie home—and then straight into town. All she had to do was follow it.

  She made her way past sleeping farms. Sometimes dogs barked.

  Then a dog came charging at her. She heard its paws scrabbling and its breath as it approached, a dark shadow moving across the ground. Her heart in her mouth, she went on walking. She knew it wouldn’t help to run.

  The dog came closer. She could see it now, a black shape in the darkness, zooming toward her.

  It caught up to her. She froze in terror, unable to move. The dog was huge and menacing. It walked all around her, sniffing.

  Bridie waited.

  Finally the dog seemed to decide she was no threat. It turned and went home.

  Bridie sighed with relief and walked on.

  She came into a village. There were no lights burning in the houses, and even the saloon was quiet. It must be very late.

  The moon slid behind silver clouds, and the night became darker.

  She could smell the lake near at hand. A bullfrog croaked, a sound like a rubber band being twanged. The road sloped down to the lakeshore. The bridge was a dark outline in the night.

  She walked up onto the bridge. There was no tollgate at this end. She felt for the wooden railing and walked along beside it, her hand patting the rail instead of sliding so she wouldn’t get splinters. She heard the soft knocking of her boots on the bridge’s wooden deck, and the lapping of the lake waters against the pilings below.

  She’d never been on the Cayuga Lake Bridge before. She’d heard people say it was long. But how long could a bridge be?

  A bat plunged at her. She yelped and ducked, then walked on.

  Even though she knew the bridge was wide and the railing went the whole way, it made her nervous to be walking on and on and on in the dark over the water. What if there were robbers or murderers hiding in the darkness?

  She walked slowly, just in case the bridge suddenly disappeared in front of her. It seemed to her she had been walking for a very long time. The night felt full of terrors. Anything could be in the dark on the bridge here. A big hole, or a gang of evil slave catchers, or a dead body—

  Her foot hit something body-like. She yelped.

  So did the person she’d just kicked. “Look where you’re going, can’t you!”

  “I can’t see where I’m going!” said Bridie. Then she added, “I do beg your pardon.”

  “That’s all right, then.” The voice sounded a little surprised, as if it wasn’t used to having its pardon begged.

  It didn’t sound like an adult. It sounded like a girl. But it was so dark Bridie couldn’t see the stranger at all—they might even be a boy.

  “Am I almost at the end of the bridge?” said Bridie.

  “Which end?”

  That didn’t sound encouraging. “The other end!”

  There was movement in the darkness; the stranger got to their feet. Bridie heard skirts rustling—probably a girl, then. The girl must have been sitting on the edge of the bridge with her legs swinging over the water.

  “No, we’re right about in the middle here,” said the girl.

  Her voice didn’t come from up above or down below. So the girl must be about the same height as Bridie.

  Bridie sighed. “This must be the longest bridge in the world.”

  “The Ponte Conde de Linhares in India is nearly twice as long,” said the girl.

  “Oh,” said Bridie, not sure how to reply to this. She was not used to people who suddenly started spouting facts about bridges in India.

  Anyway, when you are running for your life, you hardly have time to think about such things.

  “It might be the second longest, though,” said the girl. “It’s the longest in the Western Hemisphere. I’m Rose.”

  Rose’s confident tones had the effect of calming Bridie down.

  “I’m…Bridie,” she said. It had just occurred to her that maybe she needed a new name, at least temporarily.

  “Are you Irish?”

  “Yes,” said Bridie, bracing herself for questions about the famine and the coffin ships.

  Rose didn’t ask them. “Are you running from something?”

  Bridie opened her mouth to deny it and heard herself say, “How did you know?”

  “It’s kind of obvious,” said Rose. “I mean, here you are crossing the bridge in the middle of the night….”

  “What are you doing here?” said Bridie.

  “Oh, I come out here for the quiet,” said Rose airily, in a tone that made Bridie think she wasn’t telling the truth.

  Bridie had heard talk, when she’d lived in Seneca Falls last winter. She’d heard about the secret travelers who journeyed the turnpikes and canals of York State, especially at night….

  “Are you part of the Underground Railroad?” said Bridie. “Are you waiting for someone? A fugitive?”

  Rose didn’t say anything, and Bridie added hastily, “I’m, you know, in favor of the Underground Railroad and all.”

  “I’ll walk on with you,” said Rose.

  They walked along the bridge, Rose in front, Bridie behind, both of them tapping the railing to make sure they were headed the right way.

  “Wagons cross this bridge,” said Rose, “on the way to Ohio and Missouri and Oregon.”

  Bridie felt jealous of Rose, who obviously belonged somewhere and mattered enough to maybe be involved in the Underground Railroad. Bridie was acutely aware of not belonging anywhere and not mattering to anybody. She clutched the stone in her pocket.

  “Where do you live?” said Rose just then, as if she’d been reading Bridie’s mind.

  “Oh, just over by…” Bridie had been about to give the address in the Flats where she’d boarded with her mother, in those few months before the poorhouse.

  Maybe it was because of the darkness, which felt like a safe place for secrets. Maybe it was because Rose hadn’t asked about the famine or the coffin ships. Maybe it was because Rose might be an agent of the Underground Railroad, and that meant she was used to keeping secrets. Anyway, Bridie found herself blurting out the whole story. The poorhouse, and the Kigleys, and how Lavinia and Mrs. Kigley blamed everything on Bridie because they were afraid of Mr. Kigley, and everything.

  The darkness was loud with crickets, and a fish splashed in the lake below, and Rose listened.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” she said when Bridie had finished. “Well, you’ll come home with me tonight, and then…what do you need?”

  “A job,” said Bridie quickly. If she had a job, she could pay for a place to stay; hopefully one where the Kigleys wouldn’t look for her. “I’m willing to work, everybody has to.”

  “I think I can help with that,” said Rose. “I know a lad
y that always needs servants.”

  “Is she…” Bridie trailed off. Rose was being so helpful, and Bridie knew it was rude to ask for even more help, or to be picky.

  “The lady is very kind,” said Rose. “She’s just a little…”

  “Strange?” Bridie guessed. She didn’t mind that. She could handle strange. She was the best at managing Mad Janet; even Mrs. Fitch admitted that.

  “Different,” said Rose. “She’s different. Do you need a new name?”

  “Probably,” said Bridie. “At least for a while.”

  “I’ll give you my mother’s name,” Rose decided. “I don’t give it to most people, but I like you.”

  “Thank you,” said Bridie diffidently.

  “It was Phoebe.”

  Was.

  Bridie chewed over the name. A phoebe was a bird. In America, girls were named after flowers and birds and even places. During her time in Seneca Falls and the poorhouse, she’d met girls named Indiana and Tennessee, and she’d met two girls named America. Boys mostly had more ordinary names, but she had met a boy named Federal.

  “Thank you,” she said. Then she added, “Do you name a lot of people?”

  “A few. Sometimes when people need to get away, folks come looking for them by their names, you know.”

  This was apparently as close as Rose was going to get to admitting she was part of the Underground Railroad.

  “How did you know that, about the bridge in India?” Bridie asked.

  “I read it in a magazine. Shh, we’re coming up to the tollhouse.”

  Bridie didn’t know how Rose could tell. “I don’t have any money for the toll,” she admitted.

  “It’s okay, they’ll be asleep. We just have to slip past. Shh. Take my hand.”

  Bridie fumbled in the dark and found the outstretched hand. Rose’s hand was callused and work-hardened, like Bridie’s own.

  “Duck,” Rose whispered.

  Bridie did, but not low enough, and the bar of the tollgate bonked her on the head as they went under it.

  “Hey!” a voice called. “Stop here and pay toll!”

  Rose and Bridie both started running, hand in hand, their boots slapping the dirt road. Bridie felt suddenly exhilarated and joyful and glad to be alive.

  The toll keeper did not give chase, and after a while they stopped running and started walking.

  “We’ll go to my lodgings,” said Rose. “It’s down in Seneca Falls and across the river.”

  “Will your—” There might be a stepmother. “Your parents—”

  “My mother’s dead and my father’s at sea.”

  Bridie realized she’d told Rose all about herself, but hadn’t asked Rose much about herself.

  “When…” Bridie trailed off. She didn’t like answering this sort of question herself.

  “Two years ago,” said Rose.

  Bridie waited to see if Rose would say more. But Rose didn’t seem to want to, and Bridie could understand that.

  Suddenly Bridie found she was too tired to talk, too tired to do anything but keep walking. They crossed the bridge over the Seneca River in silence, except for the rushing of the waterfalls down below. And they came into Seneca Falls.

  When Bridie awoke the next morning, she was lying on a straw mattress in an over-warm attic room. She could see nails from the roof shingles poking through the wood beside her.

  There was a colored girl about her own age looking down at her.

  Bridie had seen this girl around, when she’d briefly lived in Seneca Falls before. Sometimes the girl was hurrying to school, carrying books, and sometimes she was making deliveries, carrying piles of laundry or stacks of half-finished clothes from the mills to be finished by outworkers.

  “I thought you’d never wake up,” said the girl.

  Bridie blinked. She remembered what had happened last night. “Where’s Rose?”

  “I’m Rose,” said the girl.

  “Oh,” said Bridie.

  She was startled. She had just assumed the girl she’d met on the bridge was white like her.

  “Come on downstairs. Breakfast is almost over,” said Rose.

  Bridie put on her shoes, shook her dress out—she had slept in her clothes—and followed Rose downstairs.

  There was a long boarding-house table, half empty. A couple of men, a young woman, and a small boy were still eating. The little boy stared at Bridie, who was feeling very self-conscious. She’d never been the only white person in the room before.

  The adults did not stare, but one man said solemnly, “Rose, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that is not an Underground Railroad passenger.”

  “Oh, leave her alone, Frank,” called a voice from the kitchen. A young colored man stuck his head into the room, looked at Bridie, and smiled. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, please,” said Bridie.

  “Thank you, Mr. Moody,” said Rose. “I’ll pay for—”

  “No, you won’t!” Mr. Moody shook his spoon at her. “I’m not so poor I can’t afford to give a guest breakfast.”

  And two minutes later Bridie was sitting next to Rose at the table, with a stack of flapjacks in front of her, with butter and maple syrup.

  She was so hungry she started eating without even waiting for grace. She stopped guiltily while Rose said grace, then she started up again. She’d only had maple syrup a couple of times before, and she was very much in favor of it.

  The other people at the table got up and left one by one, on their way to work, Bridie supposed. Work. She needed work. She wondered about the woman Rose had said might hire her.

  Rose had said the woman was a little different. In Bridie’s experience, when people said that, they usually meant the person was a lot different.

  Bridie helped Rose clear the table, plunging the dishes into a wooden washtub.

  “No canal run, Mr. Moody?” Rose asked.

  “Not on the Erie. Just a short run down the Cayuga & Seneca last night, and now I’m off for a few days. That’s why there’s flapjacks.” He looked at Bridie, then at Rose.

  Bridie started washing the dishes. She couldn’t pay Mr. Moody for the food, so at least she could help with that. She heard Mr. Moody and Rose having a quiet, muttered conversation.

  She thought about the Kigleys. She didn’t think the Fitches would come looking for her. One less child in the poorhouse would be a good thing as far as they were concerned. But the Kigleys might.

  She hoped she could get the job, and that it would enable her to keep out of the Kigleys’ sight.

  Rose went upstairs, and came down with a stack of small, leather-bound schoolbooks.

  “I go to school over there by Locust Hill,” she explained. “Right by Mrs. Stanton’s house. I’ll take you there first.”

  As they left the house, Bridie looked up State Street toward the railroad tracks. There was a schoolhouse right there. Bridie had gone to it herself for a couple of weeks last winter, before Mama got really sick and before the poorhouse and all that.

  “Why don’t you go to that school?” Bridie asked, pointing.

  “Because the teacher doesn’t want colored children,” said Rose.

  “Oh.” Now that Bridie thought about it, there hadn’t been any colored children there. Even though most of the colored families in Seneca Falls lived right on State Street.

  She felt guilty for having been so wrapped up in her own troubles that she hadn’t even thought about those of her new friend. “Has your father been at sea long?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Rose. “He was a boatman on the Erie Canal, but then he had an offer of work on a whaling vessel and…that’s the last we heard of him.”

  “Oh.” Bridie didn’t know what to say. “When was that?”

  They crossed busy Fall Street wi
th its shops and factories, and started down the steep slope of Water Street to the bridge.

  “Three years ago,” said Rose. “Before Mama died.”

  “But, you know, three years, that’s not really long at all for a whaling voyage, and if the ship had gone down there’d be news of it by now, and…”

  Bridie knew she was babbling, even before Rose gave her a look.

  “Sometimes colored sailors disappear even when the ship doesn’t go down,” said Rose. “They get sold.”

  “Oh.” Bridie tried to think of something comforting to say to this, and couldn’t.

  They were on the bridge crossing the Seneca River now. Bridie could hear the rushing of the man-made waterfalls that powered the factories. She looked downstream toward the islands called the Flats, where she and her mother had had lodgings last fall and winter. It seemed like forever ago.

  Mules on the towpath hauled barges away from the factories, taking all the things that were made in Seneca Falls out toward the Erie Canal and the world.

  “But letters get misdirected a lot too,” said Bridie.

  “That’s true,” said Rose. “And sometimes they just take ages to arrive.”

  They walked along Bayard Street….They were going back the way they’d come last night. This made Bridie nervous. What if this Mrs. Stanton knew the Kigleys?

  “Um, if this lady lives out the way—”

  “She’s right at the edge of town,” said Rose. “Not much further now.”

  They passed houses and stores and the American Hotel. They picked their way through a herd of mooing cows coming the other way. Even with the warm, friendly smell of cattle all around her, Bridie was getting nervous.

  “What if the lady doesn’t like me?”

  “Then she’ll probably hire you anyway,” said Rose. “But don’t worry! Why wouldn’t she like you?”

  They turned down Washington Street, passing a schoolhouse. This must be where Rose went to school.

  Bridie could hear the sound of a sawmill, and the calls of boatmen on the canal. There was a big house on a rise above the road.

  Suddenly Bridie knew where she was. Just across the rickety, narrow catwalk bridge was the part of the Flats where she and her mother had stayed. And here, on this side of the canal…She recognized the big white house. She’d seen it from the Turnpike the day the Kigleys had picked her up at the poorhouse. And there had been two little boys playing in the yard, and—