Chaneysville Incident (48 page)

She looked at me again, but this time the look wasn’t blank.

“ ‘He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune,’ ” I said. “Sir Francis Bacon. He said it in 1625, but he could have been a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly.” I got up and went to the stove and pulled the kettle over the heat. “There were quite a few who didn’t stay,” I said, without turning around.

“They moved on? Where?”

“Not on,” I said. “Back. They were runaway slaves. They came north, those that knew which way north was, looking for freedom. There was an organization to help—”

“The Underground Railroad,” she said.

“That’s right. Most of the publicity went to Philadelphia and Cincinnati, because those were the most successful routes. There was another in eastern Pennsylvania. And there was one through here.”

“Here? Why here?”

“Geography. The mountains run north and south, pretty much, but they curve away to the northeast. So if you wanted to go due north you had to cross them. So the people stuck to the valleys, the bottomlands where there were streams to lose the dogs in and—” I stopped, looked at her.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Why are you looking at me that way?”

I didn’t say anything, I just got up and went to the shelf and took down the folio. I brought it back to the table, opened it, drew out the map, spread it slowly. “This is the County,” I said. “The way it was in about 1849. This part here, the lower twenty miles or so, is the South County; before the Mason-Dixon survey cleared up the boundary dispute, it was legally part of Maryland—it had always been settled by Southerners anyway. So the sentiments were not precisely abolitionist sentiments; there was surely some slaveholding, but the records are a little sketchy, because it was better to register slaves in Maryland, where they would be slaves for life, than to do it in Pennsylvania, where they would be free after a while. Anyway, that’s the territory that runaway slaves had to come across. The first route they used was this one: up through Cumberland Valley, on the west side of Evitts Mountain, here, through these little towns, Evitts and Cruse and Centerville and Patience, and up here into town. But just about nobody made it that far, because the slave-catchers knew that route, and they’d just sit there, waiting. So after a while there was an alternate route, that split off somewhere south of the Line and came into the County east of Evitts Mountain. That route was safer, but not by a whole lot, because here, it came up along the western side of this…well, it’s not a mountain, exactly, more a hill, called Iron Ore Ridge, to this little town, Hewitt. There was another route, that came in from central Maryland, and it came along the eastern side of Iron Ore Ridge. So at Hewitt—or outside Hewitt someplace; nobody was stupid enough to go into a town—the two routes came together. That’s when it got dangerous. Because for the next six miles or so there was no place to go except north, or north by a little east, through this little valley—around here they’re called coves. About halfway between Hewitt and this town, Chaneysville, it’s extremely narrow—a half mile across, maybe less. It was easy to get caught there. But I don’t know how many did; not that many, it looks like. I don’t think the slave-catchers knew the land well enough to use that bottleneck. And they didn’t need to, because once the slaves got to Chaneysville, they either went this way, north by northeast, up Black Valley and into a town called…well, then it was called Bloody Run, and over here and into the North County, or they went this way, up over this ridge and along this valley through Rainsburg and Charlesville and on into town. There were people here who helped if they got that far. Old Jack’s grandfather was one of them, and there was a country man named John Graham who used to carry people in the bed of his wagon, hidden under hay, and there was a preacher named Fiddler and another man, named Rouse; I don’t know what he did. They hid people in a lot of different places; one was a butchershop. That was the Underground Railroad. And there were some white people involved in the Underground Railroad; a lot of them were Quakers, up here in Fishertown. But for everybody who helped, there were a few who didn’t. Which is why the slave-catchers didn’t bother going down into Southampton Township—that’s where Chaneysville is—and sitting around with dogs and horses and camping out. It was just as effective, and a lot more comfortable, for them to come in and take a room at one of the hotels and put out a few handbills and wait to see if some of the local boys didn’t want to do their work for them. There were quite a few local men who made a habit of latching on to strange black folks and turning them over for a reward. In one incident, two men, Crissmun and Mock, told two runaways they’d protect them, and then locked them up in a schoolhouse and sent for their master. Typical.” I looked at her. “Another funny thing about Fauquier County. About twenty-five years before Mr. Carter sent his overseer north, somebody—maybe even Mr. Carter—sent his slave-catcher up here. And he hauled back two runaways. Hunted them down in the mountains. One of them was named ‘George.’ The other one was named ‘Henry.’ ”

She shook her head. “But once they got across…”

“The Mason-Dixon Line? Once they made it north they were in free territory, and all they had to do was turn around and thumb nose at Massa? Nope. Didn’t work that way for anybody except thieves and murderers like Bonnie and Clyde. They passed the Hot Pursuit Laws to stop them, but there was a hot pursuit law for niggers all along, since 1793. First Fugitive Slave Act…” Something clicked in my mind. I went back to the table and picked up the cards, flipping through the red, then the orange. “Yeah,” I said. “There’s your connection. The First Fugitive Slave Act was passed in Congress in 1793. It provided for the seizure of a fugitive slave in free territory. There was a lot of trouble about it, but the first challenge came in
Prigg
v.
Pennsylvania
, in 1842. Seems that the planters had gotten a little fast and loose with the Fugitive Slave Act, and they would come across the border and claim a free black and find a tame magistrate and get a certificate of remand and haul the poor bugger back South. There was a murder case involved. A freeman named John Read killed two white men who came into his house to take him. They found handcuffs, rope, and whips at the scene. There was a mess about it, and Read was acquitted of killing Griffith, who was supposed to be his master, but found guilty of manslaughtering Shipley, who had come along to help Griffith. The state had pushed for the death penalty, but the jury of Read’s peers only gave him nine years. The legislature passed the Personal Liberty Laws, which made it harder for a free black to be taken, since he had to be given due process under the laws, where he didn’t under the Fugitive Slave Act. Then along came Prigg, a Maryland man, who sued in federal court, and the Supreme Court held that the Pennsylvania laws were unconstitutional because they were in conflict with a federal statute, which they wouldn’t have been able to do without John Marshall’s opinion of federal legal supremacy in
McCulloch
v.
Maryland.
There’s your connection.”

“And they didn’t have to prove that the black was a runaway?”

“Only to a magistrate. And…” I flipped through the cards again. “Here we go. In 1816 the justice of the peace in Town owned two slaves, one a woman named Milla, the other a child named Bonaparte. Sorry. Bonaparte was legally an indentured servant; Milla too, probably. But imagine exactly how fair a hearing a scraggly runaway was going to get. And that’s if he got this far. Down in the South County, in Southampton Township, a man named Jacob Adams was justice of the peace. I don’t know what his politics were, but he hailed from Loudon County, Virginia. He was the justice of the peace”—I flipped through the cards again, more slowly this time; my eyes weren’t as quick as they had been—“for thirty-five years. Then his son took over.”

“And they were crooked?”

I looked at her. “What do you mean, crooked?”

“Well…”

“There’s no evidence that anybody did anything illegal. There is every reason to suspect that they scrupulously upheld the law. Which said that a runaway black was exactly the same as a runaway horse, and that interfering with an owner or his agent attempting to regain his property was exactly like interfering with a man trying to catch his horse; the same as being a horse thief.”

“They were people—”

“No,” I said. “No, they were not people. That was the one thing everybody agreed on, including Abolitionists. Legally, a slave was not a person. And good old Judge Marshall comes in here again; he made the Constitution supreme, and the Constitution recognized slavery. It regulated it, and it gave Congress the power to tax imports at the rate of ten bucks a head. In fact, towards 1860, certain people started advancing the proposition that there was nothing illegal about enslaving white people—”

“I don’t understand you,” she said.

“What don’t you understand?”

“It sounds like you’re defending it.”

“Defending what?”

“Slavery.”

“It was a fact. I’m a historian.”

“What about your family?” she said. “Were they runaways?”

“No. God, no. The Professor would have died. No indeed, that’s the boring story. The crazy niggers who came here out of choice. The Stantons were good Tidewater house slaves. Got freed about 1800; I don’t know the exact date; the Professor had the papers, but he gave them to a library. But it had to have been before 1806, because that’s when the Virginia legislature made every freedman get permission to stay in the state, and I remember the Professor had a certificate dated 1806. That’s in the library too. The family stayed in Dinwiddie, Virginia. There was some kind of connection with somebody, because they were all educated after the Civil War; the Professor wasn’t the first one to go to college. A couple of doctors, a lawyer or two, and three or four preachers. The Professor got his Ph.D. and taught in Washington. Didn’t come here until 1942.”

“What about the Washingtons?”

“What about them?”

“When did they come here?”

“That’s a long story,” I said.

“Which you aren’t going to tell me.”

“It’s not interesting,” I said.

“I’m interested.”

“I’m not.”

She didn’t say anything. I closed my eyes and leaned back and let the toddy warm me. Tried to. I heard her get up and move towards the door. Her steps were short, quick; angry. She stopped suddenly, spoke abruptly.

“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you’re trying to figure out. What your father was doing here.”

“Lord, no,” I said. “I know all that. That’s why it isn’t interesting. I’m trying to figure out why he died.”

“What do you mean? I thought his death was an accident.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too. But it wasn’t. They covered up to make it look like an accident. They thought it was murder made to look like suicide but they knew nobody would believe that, so they made it out to be an accident. But it wasn’t murder.” I shook my head and got up and went to the stove.

“You’ve just discovered your father committed suicide,” she said.

“Not just,” I said.

“How long have you known?”

“Since Wednesday,” I said. “Since I wrote you the letter. I wasn’t sure then; I waited until I was sure before I mailed it.”

“And you’re trying to find out why he killed himself.”

The kettle boiled. I poured the water in and stirred the toddy with my finger, burning myself. I carried the mug back to the table and sat down heavily, spilling a little of the toddy on the note pad. She was watching me, so I had to struggle to hold the mug steady while I sipped at it. I tasted the toddy and realized I had forgotten the sugar. It didn’t matter. She watched me drink. I set the cup down carefully and took up the cards, starting to merge them all into one stack. It looked like a rainbow. I was confused; the lamplight flickered, not steady now, and I could hardly read the dates. She watched me for a while—fumbling with the cards and sipping at the toddy, spilling it—then she got up and came around the table and took the mug out of my hands. She put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me up, turned me. I could barely see her; the lamplight was betraying me. All I could see was the blue of her eyes. Her fingers moved over me, unbuttoning my shirt, undoing my belt. She undressed me quickly, efficiently, as if she were undressing a child. I did not resist her. She led me to the cot and pushed me down on it, then went back to the table and blew out the lamp.

In the darkness I heard her undressing, the clink of buckles, the rasp of a zipper. In a few minutes I could see her a little, the pale outline of her body glowing in the ruddy light that escaped from the chinks in the stove. In a moment she came and slid onto the cot beside me and I felt her against me, her skin hot where it had been closest to the stove. She pulled me to her, her arms strong and her fingers spread against my back. She did not move after that, just lay there holding me immobile, her muscles tensed, her body hard, unyielding. I knew she was waiting for me to do something, but she held my arms prisoner; I could not touch her. I tried to; I struggled, but she tightened her grip and held me still. “Shh,” she said, in a tight harsh whisper. “Shhh…” I stopped moving then, stopped doing anything, breathed as shallowly as I could, waiting and waiting, until the keening of the logs in the grate became a lullaby and I thought that I would fall asleep, fall away from her. And then, just when perhaps I would have, she gave one deep sigh and her breathing quickened, and I felt her thighs move, slipping around me below and above, and I felt her belly against me, and then the softness and heat and moistness that lurked below.

I stood on the ridge, exposed to the full force of the wind that came driving out of the south. The snow had stopped but the wind kicked that which had already fallen into great white clouds, full of icy spicules that stung my face. On the slope below me the drifts were building; they would be even worse on the eastern slopes; because of the mountains’ northeastern swing, the drifts would build there too, but the wind would not be slowed by the contour of the land. And what it meant was that if I was going to go, I would have to go now, before the eastern slopes were fully drifted, before the inevitable swing of the wind into the west drifted the western slopes and choked the valleys too.