Steal Away Home Read online

  “Dana? Listen—”

  “… but then tonight, it all changed back. Caleb is in Leavenworth for the accursed trial of Barnaby Watts. The flag’s no longer out there, but somehow the girl knew to come here, and now. She knocked on the door, good and firm, and I thought it was Edna Macon come for a cup of tea. But there stood this girl, small and sure in manner, speaking like a Southern lady. But she is as dark as the tree outside my window. She says Thou sent her to me. She says she will never get to Canada, but she’s meant to help others on their journey. My stomach did somersaults when I saw how unwavering she was. Now I eagerly await—and dread—tomorrow’s sunrise.”

  Ahn put the journal down thoughtfully, and when she lifted her eyes to Dana, they both said, “Elvira’s here.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Follow the Drinking Gourd

  June 1856

  So, it’s starting up again, James thought. Pa was off defending the man they said was a slave stealer, Ma was hiding runaways, and he and Rebecca were expected to keep their mouths shut. The unfairness of it all hit him like the snap of a wet sheet when he came down from his new room and found the girl peeling potatoes, as if she’d always been there. Ma stoked the coal stove and greeted him without turning around.

  “Welcome to a new summer day. James, shake hands with Miss Lizbet Charles.”

  James wiped the morning sweat off his hand and stuck it out. The girl, Lizbet, wiped potato starch down her apron and shook his hand. “Morning, Mr. James Weaver. You don’t look a bit like your sister.” She looked him right in the eye, not like the others who’d come to the house.

  Something was wrong here. Miz Lizbet was no ordinary runaway slave. As soon as he saw his ma’s face—working her lips like dough, eyelids shading frightened eyes—he wondered what hold this young Negro had over his mother. And at the same time, he just knew Ma had given her leave to stay with them: She wouldn’t be moving on by nightfall, like the others.

  Miz Lizbet must have understood some of the dread in his face. “Your family’s kind to let me stay a spell,” she said haughtily, as if she had it coming. There wasn’t a hint of a smile in her voice, and her speech was so schoolteacherlike, not like the other runaways who’d picked up words hurdy-gurdy.

  Ma couldn’t get the stove lit. “Well, it’s too hot to cook anyway,” she said. “We’ve got some cold meat pie from last night, and peaches, and a bit of bread pudding I put by. We’ll make do.”

  “Ma, I’m going down to the river with Jeremy and them. Too hot to do much but swim and fish on a day like this.”

  “Yes, bring us home a fat catfish or two for supper. We’ll cook the fish outside on an open fire.”

  That brought the first smile to Miz Lizbet. “Oh, I do love fried fish with that smoky fire taste.”

  “Fine,” Ma said nervously. “Lizbet, would thee go down to the cellar and fetch the meat pie and a handful of peaches, please?” They’d built steps to the cellar inside the house—a modern innovation—and Ma pointed the way. When Miz Lizbet was out of earshot, Ma whispered, “I’m called to this, James. She’s asked me to teach her to read and write.”

  “Ma! Thee knows it’s illegal to teach slaves to read.”

  “Lizbet is not a slave. She’s a free Negro on free soil.”

  “It’s starting up again, Ma, Rebecca and me wondering who we’re going to find warming their feet by our fire.” Ma had beads of sweat on her upper lip; it would be months before anyone would need to warm his feet. Why had he used that ridiculous example? But now he hit her with the big one: “And us lying to Pa.”

  Ma’s nose flared, which was a sure sign she was trying to get herself easy again, so she wouldn’t say something she’d be sorry about. “Thee must understand, James, each of us must answer to the voice within.”

  “But we were just getting happy out here in Kansas. Just starting to feel like maybe it could be home.” Building the house a second time had done it for James. He’d sketched every step of the progress. Only yesterday he’d ripped up his baby sketch of the Boston house. He’d thrown the paper pieces into the Wakarusa, watched them bloat up and sink.

  “James Weaver, I have been waiting for a sign. Lizbet is the sign. Thee must learn to accept what God demands of us.”

  “Of thee, Ma, not of me.”

  Ma reached out and gently raked his hair across his brow. “I must take a pair of shears to thy hair, or thee won’t be able to see thy supper.”

  He jerked away from her touch. “Jeremy and them, they go to a barber.”

  “And will thee be having some tailor sew thy clothes, and will thee be taking thy meals at a boardinghouse?” Ma asked crossly.

  “Who’s more important to thee—some slave girl, or thy family?” There, it was out.

  Ma locked her arms across her chest, and James knew she was deep in prayer. Her chest rose and fell as if she were sleeping, her nose flared. He tried to pray but only felt the silence that echoed in the new wood-paneled room. Finally, he heard Miz Lizbet’s footsteps coming up from the cellar.

  “She stays,” Ma whispered.

  • • •

  The catfish was crisp and salty, and the potatoes, too, fried in a big pan over the campfire. A pile of fish heads and bones lay on the ground, and Rebecca poked at the eyes with a twig.

  “Thee can pop them out for marbles,” she said gleefully. The Kansas evening was steamy already. They had no need for more heat, so Miz Lizbet doused the fire with a slug of water from a bucket. While the fire sizzled, James stole a look at her face, grayed by the dusk and the slant of moonlight.

  Ma caught him looking. “Lizbet tells glorious stories.”

  “Tell us one, tell us one!” Rebecca begged.

  She didn’t need much prompting. “There’s a man named Henry Brown,” she began.

  “Was he a white man?” Rebecca asked.

  “He was a black man. Could have been my uncle. A man who worked in a tobacco factory in Virginia. A slave man. Amen.” The cadence of her speech was so musical that James was lured into the story. “A braver man you can’t imagine, a man who dreamed of making free. So deep and wide was his yearning for freedom, he did something that could have delivered him to lonely death.”

  “What did he do?” Rebecca whispered.

  “Henry Brown of Virginia, he heard the voice of God, said, ‘Go get a box and put yourself in it.’ Had himself sealed in a box, box shaped like a coffin.”

  “Oh, he couldn’t!”

  “Could and did, Rebecca Weaver. A Godsent white man, a carpenter like the other one, made him a box, nailed it shut, put five hickory loops wound round to keep the box fixed. Mailed him to Philadelphia. Amen.”

  “How long did he stay in the mail?” Rebecca asked, and Ma said, “Hush, child.”

  “No, let her ask questions. It’s only when folks stop asking questions, we’re in muddy waters.”

  No? A Negro had out-and-out said no to a white woman? James watched her more closely, drawn deeper into the rolling river of her voice.

  “Twenty-six hours he traveled in that box. Tossed upside down, he was, blood pumping into his head, from Virginia to Maryland.”

  James wondered about the details—food, water, and so forth.

  “But what happened when he had to make water?”

  “Rebecca Weaver!”

  “Don’t know,” Miz Lizbet said with a smile. “You go up to Philadelphia sometime, ask to see a man called Henry Box Brown, little man, not much bigger than me, and you ask him, ‘What did you do twenty-six hours in that box, when you had to make water?’ ”

  “Oh, Miz Lizbet, I couldn’t!”

  “Then listen. When that box, it got to Philadelphia, three men were waiting for him. First man knocked on the box; he thought he heard a tapping, but couldn’t be sure. Second man rapped on the box with a hammer, and there wasn’t a sound from inside. The third man, his heart beating fast, he didn’t wait for an answering rap. He took his bowie knife, and he cut the hickory loops that h
eld the box fixed. Those men, they pried the lid up, long nails came squeaking up through the wood. Pulled away the straw and cotton wool padding that kept Henry Brown from breaking his bones when that box was tossed from the train to the riverboat. And what do you reckon they found?”

  James guessed, “His hair’d turned white and he was crazy as a loon?”

  “Naw. Those three men, they fell back when Henry Box Brown stepped out of that crate and he said to them, ‘How do you do, gentlemen?’ Spry as a young buck, drenched in sweat, though. True story. Amen.”

  James was fixing the details in his mind to tell Jeremy and Will, only he wouldn’t be able to tell them where he got the story, and they’d never believe it.

  Miz Lizbet said, “Black folks find all different ways of following the drinking gourd.”

  James had heard a song with those words. Some of the men were singing it at the warming for a family whose house had just been rebuilt. “Follow the drinking gourd.” He’d thought it was a bawdy song.

  “Not a drinking gourd for spirits, surely,” Ma said, her voice girlish.

  “No, ma’am. Look up, see the sky. See how those stars make a dipper.”

  They all had their faces toward the darkening sky. “I don’t see it,” Rebecca said.

  “Thee must draw a line in thy mind from star to star, child, and see if it doesn’t look like a big water dipper.”

  Miz Lizbet added, “Now look for the brightest star at the handle end, see?”

  James saw it—the North Star. Last spring he’d been amazed to find it in the sky here, just as it had been in Boston.

  “Mr. James Weaver sees it. It’s the North Star. When my brothers and sisters leave their shackles behind, we follow the North Star. Keep seeing the star, you know you’re heading north to freedom. And while we’re still down there, only just dreaming about making free, we look up at that star like we’re doing tonight, the water dipper, too, and we sing so our masters don’t know about the dream that’s burning in our hearts. Sing ‘steal away home to Jesus,’ sing ‘wade in the water children,’ sing ‘follow the drinking gourd.’ ” Miz Lizbet chuckled. “White masters think we haven’t got a thought in our heads.”

  “Thee tells it right pretty,” James said, gazing at the stars that came as tiny explosions in the blackening sky.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Conductor

  Swine Flu was, without a doubt, the best band in Kansas, and because the drummer knew somebody, who knew somebody, whose mother was the librarian at Thoreau, Swine Flu played at the dance on the last night of school.

  Dana’s mother chaperoned the dance, with way too many other parents, and afterward she drove everybody home.

  “Air-conditioning!” Sally gasped.

  Dana and Ahn and Sally and Jeep and Derek and Mike were a jumble of jeans in the back, on the seat, the floor, on laps, while Dana’s mother had the whole wide front seat to herself.

  “Wasn’t the band cool?” Sally said.

  “It’s the first dance we didn’t have a DJ. Live music is so—live,” said Derek. “They were great.”

  “They didn’t take any requests.”

  “Everything sounded the same.”

  “Too much pop. Not enough heavy metal.”

  “No punk.”

  “No seventies.”

  “No rap.”

  “I liked everything except the songs they wrote themselves.”

  “They sure were great.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jeep asked, “What did you think of Swine Flu, Mrs. Shannon?”

  “Well, I’ve given this a lot of consideration. I think they’re loud, vile, uncoordinated, derivative, obscene, greasy, no-talent young men.”

  “I guess they were worth every penny, then,” Mike said.

  Since someone had already done the unpardonable and spoken to the chauffeur, Derek continued the breach of etiquette. “So, how’s the dead body in your upstairs room, Mrs. Shannon?”

  “Still dead. But the issue’s not.” A van came out of nowhere, and she had to swerve to miss it. “Maybe I should keep my mind on the road?”

  Sally whispered, “I forgot how your mother drives. I was really hoping I’d live until high school.”

  “Hey, can you believe it, we’re officially eighth graders!” Jeep yelled.

  “Next year we’ll be freshmen!”

  “That’s a sexist term, Derek.”

  “Okay, okay, freshpersons.”

  There was a lot of cheering and rearranging of the tangle of legs. Then Dana said, “Guess what my dad turned up about Elvira.”

  “El-VYE-ruh, El-VYE-ruh,” Mike sang, in a crummy imitation of the Oak Ridge Boys.

  “Good thing you’re only the warm-up act, Mike. Actually, Elvira’s name was really Lizbet Charles. We think she was a conductor on the Underground Railroad.”

  Ahn explained, “The conductors were the ones who led slaves on the trip north to freedom.”

  Jeep asked, “That’s what old Elvira did?”

  “Well, we don’t know that much about her. There was just one paragraph my dad found in some book published in 1870. But it looks like she made about eight or ten trips back into the South to rescue slaves.”

  “And here’s the amazing part,” Ahn said. “All those people she led north, we think they slept in Dana’s house.”

  Jeep said, “It gives me the creeps, those people getting stung with whips and being sold like cattle and not getting to stay with their wives or kids. It’s pretty incredible they made it as far as your place, Dana. That house could be like a national historical monument, if it’s all true.”

  “Except for the fact that an extremely dead person turned up in that house,” Mike said. “1 think they take off points for that.”

  “Don’t you wonder what happened to her, really and actually?” asked Sally. “I mean, don’t you wonder how she ended up dead?”

  “Let’s find out,” Jeep said, and at that moment Dana decided she’d show him Millicent Weaver’s journal sometime when the others weren’t around.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Three First Names

  July 1856

  “Not whilst my husband’s home!”

  “They come when they come,” Miz Lizbet said. Both women sewed bolts of gray fabric, but James noticed that Ma’s done-end folded into a thick pile at her feet while Miz Lizbet struggled with every stitch.

  “Thee doesn’t understand,” Ma said. “Thee may not bring thy pilgrims when Mr. Weaver is in the house.”

  “They come when they come,” Miz Lizbet said again. “They come like the tide which God Himself can’t hold back.”

  “Lizbet Charles, thee is the most stubborn mule of a woman I have ever encountered.”

  James looked up from his sketchbook to see if Ma had some teasing in her face, but her brow was wrinkled and her lips pressed tightly together as if she were holding pins. James was close enough to hear her grind her teeth. “My husband comes home tomorrow. Thee may not stay here any longer.”

  “Too soon,” Miz Lizbet said.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Miz Lizbet put her sewing aside and walked over to the cold grate of the fireplace. It seemed to James that she was ticking things off in her mind, a great list with check marks beside each item. Finally, she said, “I won’t bring them to the door if the flag isn’t out. I’ll keep going with them to the next station.”

  “But if thee is here whilst my husband is in the house, thee must stay in the small room upstairs. Thee must not show thy face.”

  And so, James guessed, they came to some womanly agreement, because Ma said nothing more about Miz Lizbet leaving for a while.

  “I sew much faster when I talk,” she said, settling back into the rocking chair. She held her needle in midair; it never found the fabric. “Mr. James Weaver, have you heard about Miz Ellen Craft? She escaped in a wondrous way.”

  “No, Miz Lizbet,” he said, trying not to sound too rude. That little prairie ch
urch he had in his mind just wouldn’t come into clear focus on the paper. Must have been because Miz Lizbet was talking on and on.

  “From Georgia, she was a brave woman, a slave. Amen.”

  “Amen,” James said, thinking that would be the end of it.

  “Her father was a white man, her master to be sure. Miz Ellen Craft was light enough to pass for white. And she had a great love in her life. William Craft, he was. They were as married as slaves could be. This wasn’t yesterday, or day before. This was eighteen and forty-eight—long time ago.”

  “She escaped? How?” Why was Ma encouraging Miz Lizbet?!

  “Nearly Christmas, before dawn, Ellen and William left their cabin, said good-bye to no one, not even her mother. They went to the railroad station to begin their journey.”

  “Thee means the Underground Railroad?”

  “No, ma’am. I mean the legal, above the ground, on the tracks, riding in a train railroad station. And Ellen Craft rode in first class, too.”

  “How was she able to manage that?” Ma asked, her flying fingers pulling thread through the fabric.

  “She passed as a rich Southern planter gentleman in a fine black suit and cloak, some high-heeled boots with a glassy shine, a gentleman’s top hat. But a half-blind cat would notice right away that this gentleman had no proper beard. So William fixed a muffler around Ellen’s face like a poultice, as if she was ailing something fierce from a toothache. And those pretty-girl eyes, they hid behind thick green frame glasses.”

  “Very imaginative,” Ma said, “but the Bible frowns on women dressing in the raiment of men.”

  “Yes, Miz Weaver, and the Bible frowns on treating human beings like beasts of burden. Why, I heard a preacher once say even the beasts of the field had a Sabbath day of rest. Mr. James Weaver, are you listening?”

  “Yes, Miz Lizbet,” he groaned. Maybe that steeple was just too tall. He lopped off the point by hiding it in clouds. Better.

  “And that’s not all. William did Ellen Craft up as an invalid, so no one would know she couldn’t read or write like a gentlemen should. Put her arm in a sling so she couldn’t sign the register in all those fine hotels where she put her head down each night. She hobbled with a cane. He said she was deaf so she’d never have to talk.”