Starting from Seneca Falls

by Karen Schwabach

  While the two men were fighting, the hoggee on the boat brought the fresh team clop-clopping across the gangplank, onto shore. He calmly unhitched the old team, hitched up the fresh team, and led the old team back to the barge.

  The second mule in the old team did not want to come aboard. It stopped with its front hooves down in the boat, its hind hooves up on the gangplank, and its rear end sticking up in the air.

  The hoggee coaxed. He urged. The men on the boat grabbed the mule’s bridle and pulled. The hoggee threatened and cursed. The mule stayed where she was.

  Then Mr. Kigley broke free of the hoggee he was fighting. He charged across the gangplank, coming toward the mule from behind.

  Everyone watching knew this was a very, very bad idea. Rose winced. Bridie covered her eyes.

  There was a muffled THUNK as the mule let fly with one hoof, kicking Mr. Kigley in the midriff and sending him flying through the air to land in a heap on the bank.

  “Is he dead?” Bridie asked.

  “No, he’s moving,” said Rose.

  Bridie uncovered her eyes. The mule was calmly walking into her stall, the gangplank was up, and the barge was moving on.

  The barge glided on, at a slow-plodding mule’s pace, north through the Montezuma Marsh to the great Erie Canal, where they turned west toward Rochester and Buffalo.

  The girls kept an anxious watch for Mr. Kigley, in case he reappeared. Lavinia eventually emerged from the cabin. This was not an improvement, but Rose and Bridie resolved to enjoy the trip anyway. They sat up on top of the cabin and peeled vegetables for the cook. After they’d done that, they got out and walked for a while along the towpath, and petted the mules, Mephistopheles and Sally.

  The placid green water lay still, except for the occasional wakes of the slow-moving barges and packet boats. The canal was wide enough for passing, but there was only one towpath. So whenever two mule teams met, one was unhitched and stood aside for the other to pass.

  Everyone sat on the roof to eat the Irish stew Mrs. Moggy had prepared. Everything tasted better when you ate it outdoors, Bridie thought, but the stew would’ve tasted good anywhere. It was nothing like anything she’d ever had in Ireland.

  “What is this stuff?” said Lavinia, poking at the stew in her bowl and wrinkling her nose.

  “This is delicious,” said Bridie loudly.

  “Low bridge!” called out Mr. Moody, and everyone set their bowls down and scrambled off the roof.

  When the bridge was past, they were relieved to see their bowls were still there. Sometimes low bridges were very, very low.

  After dinner, Rose managed to get Lavinia to help wash the dishes.

  Night fell, and the girls borrowed hay from the mules and made a place to sleep on deck. Bridie looked up at the stars and waited for Lavinia to stop grumbling.

  Another barge drifted past, and someone on it was plucking on a banjo. The boatmen on their barge picked up the song:

  We were forty miles from Albany, forget I never shall

  What a terrible storm we had one night on the E-ri-e Canal.

  Well the Erie was a-rising, and the rum was getting low

  And I scarcely think we’ll get a drink till we get to Buffalo.

  Erie Canal barges traveled day and night to make the long journey across the state in just nine days. Mr. Moody was working this trip all the way west to Buffalo, then back east again and down the Cayuga & Seneca Canal to Seneca Falls. He told the girls they would probably reach Rochester early in the morning of the day after tomorrow.

  A few times in the night the girls were awakened by the rush of water filling a lock. Now that they were westward bound, the locks lifted the boat higher for each new section of canal. Bridie fell back asleep to the sound of the mules clopping across the gangplank.

  * * *

  The next day dawned, with birdsong and a faint, drizzling rain. Farms and villages slid past. Bridie and Rose stood on the bow of the barge to yell “Low bridge!” whenever one came into sight, and once “Really low bridge!” when they thought the roof of the cabin might scrape…and it did.

  Rose pored over a copy of that same newspaper Mr. Stanton had brought home, the one from California. One of the boatmen had lent it to her.

  “It looks like it’s really true about the gold,” she told Bridie. “They’ve found gold in California at a place called the American River.”

  Lavinia grabbed the paper away from Rose and read, while Rose looked offended and Lavinia didn’t notice.

  “It’s a load of hogwash, if you ask me,” said Lavinia.

  “Which no one did,” Bridie pointed out. She grabbed the paper from Lavinia and started to read.

  “Supposing they did find gold in California, why would they tell everybody back east about it?” said Lavinia.

  “The paper’s for Californians,” said Rose.

  “It says it’s a special edition for back east,” said Bridie.

  “They’re up to something, those Californians,” said Lavinia.

  Bridie handed the paper back to Rose. She didn’t know what she thought. Those rumors about gold in California had been going around for months. Bridie hadn’t paid much attention. California was a long way away.

  But they had printing presses out there, too, it seemed. And so the story about gold had traveled through time and space to York State, riding on a piece of paper. That was what print could do.

  Bridie wondered who had set the type.

  “I think it’s true about the gold,” said Rose. “Why would everyone be talking about it if it wasn’t? Besides, it’s all here in this paper.”

  “How far away is California?” Bridie was still a bit uncertain of American geography.

  “About three thousand miles,” said Rose.

  “That’s as far as Ireland!” said Bridie.

  “And harder to get to,” said Rose. “Because you have to go across land, with oxen and stuff, and people get dysentery and cholera, and this one wagon train a couple years ago got stuck in the snow and they all ate each other.”

  “It doesn’t seem worthwhile,” said Bridie.

  “There are mountains in California, and big grizzly bears. And monstrous huge trees, like nowhere else in the world, and earthquakes.”

  That did sound rather appealing.

  Lavinia sneered and took herself off to the other end of the boat.

  “What’s going to happen when we get to Rochester?” said Bridie.

  “We’ll go to Mr. Douglass’s newspaper,” said Rose. “He’ll know where to find Mrs. Stanton and she’ll know where to find Lavinia’s mother.”

  “And then…” Bridie trailed off. She knew Rose wanted to continue her schooling.

  “He did say I could stay with them,” said Rose.

  “Do the Douglasses have a really big house?”

  “Normal sized I think.”

  Bridie touched the pebble in her pocket. She was still a long way from Ireland, but she no longer felt so alone. She had Rose for a friend. If Rose moved to Rochester, Bridie would be alone again.

  You couldn’t really count Mrs. Stanton. She was kind. All the Stantons were, even the tiny ones. But Bridie was just a servant in their house, and they had had a lot of servants.

  Bridie wanted what was best for Rose, of course. You had to want that, didn’t you, for your friends? Bridie wasn’t sure where her bump of friendship was, but she could feel it telling her that.

  Well, they could stay friends, anyway, even if they were going to be a long way apart—couldn’t they?

  “If you keep going on the Erie Canal to the end, then you can get on a ship and go across the Great Lakes to Chicago and even further,” said Rose.

  “What’s Chicago?” said Bridie.

  “The fastest-growing city in the world. It was hardly
even there when we were born.” Rose looked down at the passing water. “And there are even more places further west. I’d like to go someday.”

  It was really true, Bridie thought. Starting from Seneca Falls, you could go anywhere.

  “I’ll go too,” she said.

  * * *

  That night they slept on the deck again, huddling under a piece of canvas to keep the soft, drizzly rain from their faces. The smell of canvas reminded Bridie of the ship from Liverpool. She couldn’t sleep. She got out at a lock to walk with the mules for a while.

  Crickets hummed and frogs plopped into the water as the mule team clopped along. The smell of stagnant water and mules filled the air. Silver mist rose from the canal like ghosts.

  Bridie walked on one side of the mule team, and Mr. Moody walked on the other. He was acting as hoggee, one of the regular hoggees having gone down with a bout of ague and been left at his aunt’s house in Palmyra.

  The night air was just a little bit cold on Bridie’s face. She put her arm over Sally the mule’s back and buried her face for a moment in the warm, mule-smelling flank.

  Lantern light from an oncoming barge danced on the water. Bridie heard the hooves of the approaching mule team.

  “Upstream barge here,” called Mr. Moody. “Give way.”

  “Ain’t gonna give way; we’re running light,” said the hoggee from the other barge.

  “But we’re an upstream barge!” said Mr. Moody indignantly.

  The other barge drew closer, coming down the canal toward them.

  “Get out of our way or we’ll chuck you in the ditch,” said the stranger. He called out to someone on his boat. “Hey, John, got some trouble here.”

  A boatman jumped from that barge to the towpath. He landed on all fours, then got to his feet and looked down at Bridie. “Say, don’t I know you?”

  His breath reeked of whiskey.

  Bridie recognized the voice. She felt as if her stomach had turned to ice. The cold crept all through her, and no amount of fuzzy mule fur could take it away.

  “No,” she said. Her voice shook, and it was hard to go on.

  She looked up through the darkness at a face she hadn’t seen in months. Not since it had peered down, dissatisfied, at Bridie’s mother’s last pay envelope from the woolen mill.

  “Ain’t you Molly’s girl?”

  Bridie said nothing. She couldn’t. Her throat had closed up. It was not the same as that day at the women’s rights convention, when she’d been afraid to speak. Now she was too angry to speak. She hadn’t known it was possible to be this angry.

  Even when the landlord had come to pull down her family’s house in Ireland, she hadn’t been this furious. Because then it had seemed like the way things were, with the landlord doing something that had to be done.

  But Bridie had changed. Now she knew about human rights.

  “You don’t know who I am, do you?” said the man, grinning all over his ugly red face.

  Behind her in the dark, Mr. Moody and the other hoggee were arguing about which mule team had the right-of-way.

  Bridie struggled to find her voice. She thought again about that day at the convention. She had spoken, and people had listened. She could do it again.

  “Yes, I know who you are.” Her voice shook, so she took a breath and steadied it. “You’re John Gerry. You married my mother.”

  Her teeth were clenched so hard they hurt.

  “Heard you two was in the poorhouse,” he said. “Get out, did you?”

  “She died.” Bridie hated even telling him this. He didn’t deserve to know.

  He stopped grinning. “Well, that’s a durn shame. She was a good woman in her way.”

  Bridie wanted to kick him.

  “Still,” John Gerry went on, “it’s good to know I’m free to find the next Mrs. Gerry.”

  Bridie wanted to kick him and throw him in the canal.

  “Got a sweet little thing in mind already, out in Buffalo,” said Mr. Gerry, winking at Bridie. “Good thing I ran into you. And now you, where are you headed, dear?”

  “None of your business,” said Bridie.

  “Suit yourself.” John Gerry gave a shrug, and turned to the hoggee, who was still arguing with Mr. Moody. “Give way, Mike. They’re an upstream barge.”

  Grumbling, the hoggee named Mike unhitched his towrope so that Mr. Moody, Bridie, and the mules could pass.

  John Gerry turned to jump back onto his canal boat.

  As he bent his knees to leap, Bridie did kick him. Right in the back of one knee. His legs slid from under him and he fell into the canal with an almighty splash.

  Mike and Mr. Moody laughed, and the boatmen who were awake on both barges cheered.

  Bridie turned away in disgust. Because it was like Ireland, it was the way things were. It was like the landlord pulling down the roof, and like Bridie’s family wasting away while the wagonloads of grain rolled past on the road. It was the way things were.

  And the way things were needed to change.

  The Erie Canal went straight into the heart of Rochester, the great Flour City. The barge glided past mills that sent up a smell of flour and dust as they ground the wheat and other grains of York State.

  Bridie and Rose stood on the cabin roof, almost hopping with excitement. Lavinia sat beside them, kicking her legs and looking indifferent.

  “I wonder if Mr. Douglass really meant it when he said I could stay with him and go to school,” said Rose.

  “He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it.” Bridie was trying to peer down the busy city streets as they slid by. She turned to look up ahead. “People don’t say things like that just to—hey! We’re going over a bridge?”

  Even Lavinia looked slightly interested.

  “It’s an aqueduct,” said Rose knowledgeably. “It carries the canal across the Genesee River.”

  The mule team walked onto the aqueduct’s stone towpath, and the barge floated along behind. The canal was crossing the river. Looking down, Bridie could see the rushing waters of the Genesee chuckling over rocks.

  Just the other side of the aqueduct the barge stopped.

  “Follow the north star, as they say,” said Mr. Moody, pointing. “Go up that street a hundred yards, and you’ll see the North Star newspaper office right in front of you. You’re not the first people we’ve sent there.”

  Rose and Bridie thanked him. They said goodbye to the boatmen, the cook, and the mules. Dragging Lavinia, they headed up the street to Frederick Douglass’s newspaper.

  It was early, and the newspaper office was not open yet.

  There was a colored family waiting on the front step—the father leaning in the doorway, the mother beside him, and two little boys sitting on the step at their feet. They looked weary and travel-stained.

  The mother nodded a greeting. “Nobody’s here yet.”

  She spoke with a southern drawl that Bridie had trouble understanding.

  The man said to Rose, “Have you followed the north star too?”

  His accent was as thick as the woman’s.

  “No, sir, I’m from York State,” said Rose.

  Just then a white man approached, carrying a key.

  “Good morning, all,” he said.

  The family on the step looked poised to run.

  “Have no fears. I’m just Mr. Douglass’s printer,” the white man said, unlocking the door. “William Nell’s the name. He should be along soon. Won’t you come in?”

  “We’ll wait here until he comes, sir,” said the father.

  You could see in his eyes that he’d seen too much to trust a strange white man, even on the steps of the North Star.

  The girls followed Mr. Nell into the newspaper office. The place smelled of ink and linseed oil. There were desks with stacks of pa
per everywhere, and…yes, and a big cast-iron printing press in the back.

  “Shouldn’t we ask their names?” Bridie whispered, glancing back at the family on the steps.

  “We don’t ask if we don’t need to know,” Rose whispered back. “They’ll probably get new ones soon anyway.”

  “But should they just be standing there when someone could—”

  “This is Rochester,” said Rose. “They’ll be fine.”

  Both girls looked at the family. Bridie remembered how she and her mother had walked to Cork to catch the boat to Liverpool, where they’d take ship for America. She thought she almost knew how they felt. Except that the only enemy stalking Bridie and her mother had been hunger.

  “Probably fine,” Rose added. But she didn’t take her eyes off the four people on the doorstep.

  Lavinia stood with her arms folded and looked disgusted.

  Mr. Nell went over to the press and began fiddling with it. Bridie moved closer to watch, fascinated.

  “You girls don’t look like the usual morning congregation on the doorstep,” Mr. Nell remarked.

  “We need to find Mrs. Stanton,” said Bridie. “Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she’s about this tall with curly hair and—”

  “Oh, I know Mrs. Stanton well,” said Mr. Nell. “All of the anti-slavery folks know each other; it’s a bit depressing when you think about it. Hand me that composing stick.”

  Bridie handed it to him. “Can you tell us how to find her, please? She’s in town for the second-ever women’s rights convention.”

  “She’s probably staying with Mrs. Post,” said Mr. Nell. “Frederick will know…ah, here he comes.”

  Mr. Douglass ushered the family of fugitives into the office. “…two choices, really,” he was saying to them. “You can settle in Rochester. York State is free. But the law requires you be turned over to your so-called master if he ever shows up, and Congress is threatening to strengthen that law.”

  “He’d cross hell barefoot to get us back,” said the father.

  He didn’t say it like he was swearing. Just stating a fact.