Redfield Farm: A Novel of the Underground Railroad (25 page)

Her words touched my heart, and my eyes involuntarily fluttered to Josiah, locked on his, and fluttered away.

Jesse continued. “The owner, a Mr. Robert Tull, was happy to have company and showed me the finest hospitality. I felt a little mean, coming there to rob him like I was, but I went right on playing the Southern gentleman. Josiah was chained in the barn all night.”

Josiah nodded. “Pure torture, puttin’ on those chains. But I whisper to the slave what chain me that I need to talk to Amanda.”

“Ole Joe come to me at the back door,” Amanda put in. “Say someone in the barn want to see me. I say I busy and go back in the house. Still, I wonder who it be. Back in my cabin about eight o’clock, Ole Joe come round again. This time I say, ’What you doin’ knockin’ at my door again?’ All he say is ‘You gotta come.’ So I gets my kit and go to the barn, thinkin’ maybe somebody hurt or ailin’.”

Josiah mimmicked his feisty mother coming to the barn with her basket of herbs and potions, expecting to treat a sick slave. Then he looked at her with such tenderness. “I saw her, I ’most cried.”

“Mama married one of the orchard workers. He die two year ago,” Josiah explained. “He a bit older, but good to her. Lovely’s daddy.”

Lovely sat quiet, hands in her lap, listening to the others tell the tale.

“She the reason I run,” Amanda said. “She seventeen. Got a chance for a good life. This one,” she indicated Josiah, “he tell me I got two grandchildren. Oh, joy. I lost five babies of my own. Thought I lost six, but God give me this one back. That why I run. Mistress Tull be heartbroken now I’m gone. But I got to save my best for my own.”

Now Lovely spoke. “I find out I got a brother, a nephew and a niece. All at once.” She smiled, her young face alight with the joy of freedom.

Jesse took up the story from there. “The next morning I fetched my Negro from the barn, thanked my host, and headed south. About five miles on, we found an abandoned tobacco shed, so we drove in there and sat out the day. After dark, we headed on north, hoping Amanda and Lovely’d be waiting when we reached the Tull place.”

“We’s ready,” Amanda crowed. “We’s waitin’ by the line fence. All pack up and dress for the trip. Long come the buggy. Stop. We step in like ladies, and we gone!”

“That night was fine.” Jesse continued. “We traveled until around eleven and came to a little place called Lost City. It is a lost city, for sure. Not much city at all—only about a dozen houses tucked away in the mountains. A mile or so beyond there was the Easterbrook place, a station. They put us up for the night. The next day is when it got worrisome.” He and Josiah exchanged glances. I sensed a bond between them, and was glad for it.

“We started out around eight o’clock so it’d look like we were off to church. Things went along fine until early afternoon when we met three slave catchers headed south. They stopped us and demanded papers. I had false papers for Josiah and Amanda, but none for Lovely. I took my time getting them out, thinking to hand over what I had, and try to explain away what I didn’t. I thought they might be illiterate louts, and I was right. They only glanced at the papers and asked me where I was going.”

Jesse stood in the center of the circle like a performer, all eyes on him. Dust particles danced in the rays of morning sun shining through the barn boards. “I said I was a slave dealer from Harrisonburg, on my way to deliver these three to a buyer. I didn’t like the look of them, but I hoped they’d buy my story and let us go. Then one of them says, “He’s a weak lookin’ specimen, ain’t he?” Meaning me. “We could just knock him on the head and take these three for ourselfs. That buck alone’d fetch four hundred over to Winchester.’”

Josiah stiffened at the memory. “I reach for the ax handle stowed under the buggy seat. If I’s goin’ back into slavery, I’s goin’ fightin’.”

“I tried to talk some sense into them,” Jesse continued. “Bought us some time. Told them my brother, a constable in Harrisonburg, expected me back in a day or so. Said he wouldn’t rest ’til he saw them hanged if they touched me. Then I clucked to the horses and drove on past. They sat in the track until we’d gone maybe a quarter mile; then they commenced to following us.”

Amos, Nathaniel, Abby, and I sat in rapt attention. Amanda looked from one to another, eyes alight, fully enjoying the telling.

”I knew there was a safe house a few miles ahead, but I hoped our friends would turn back so they wouldn’t see us stop there. I’d been told to look for a red brick house with a blue and white quilt hanging out a second story window. If the quilt wasn’t there, we were to move on. Found the house but no quilt, so we kept on going.”

He took a drink of coffee, his breakfast untouched atop his log seat. “The next place I knew of was maybe twenty miles on, past Moorefield. I don’t mind tellin’ you, I was scared. Then here comes a wagon down the track, with an old black man driving. He stops and we talk.”

Jesse emptied his coffee cup and set it down on the floor, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “I say maybe he should turn around and travel with us. He’s from a nearby farm on his way to his master’s son’s farm with a sow he wants bred. The sow stinks. He says the slave catchers won’t bother him, but if we turn in at the next left, there’s folk there that’ll help us. We thank him and move on.”

Now Jesse sat down on a log, rubbing his thighs with rough hands. He looked up at the open door in the hay mow. “The next left was maybe a mile farther on. Barely a path leading back into the woods. I hoped I could trust the man’s word. I turned the team in. The track meandered for maybe another mile into a hollow in the mountain. Finally we came to a house and barn and some outbuildings.” Nate stood up. “Gee, Jesse, how’d you know it wasn’t a trap?”

“I didn’t. Sometimes you just have to hope and trust. I couldn’t see if our friends had followed us or not, so I pulled up to the house and knocked on the door.”

“The owner was a country doctor with five slaves, Tate Woodruff. He took a chance, helping us. He took me into his house and sent the other three to the slave quarters. He was deeply conflicted about slavery, said he’d often thought of freeing his. He’d allowed one to buy his freedom, and that one was saving to buy his wife away, too.”

Josiah spoke up. “He a good man. He slaves, they stayed ’cause they cared for him.”

“I told him how Josiah had run all the way to Canada and come back for his mother,” Jesse continued, “and about our three friends following us. Told him I needed shelter and time to reorganize.”

The barn was silent except for Jesse’s voice. It seemed as though even the animals were listening in rapt attention.

“That a strange place, that farm,” Josiah put in. “Them slaves knew they could run. Knew the workin’s of the Railroad. Knew the where and the who and the how. But they loved the doctor.”

“I asked him if he was afraid my Negroes would make his dissatisfied—make them want to run, too,” Jesse went on. “He said yes, but slaves were always going to be dissatisfied, so he didn’t think it would matter much.”

Josiah was obviously interested in Woodruff’s slaves. His voice grew quiet as he talked about them. “They were one family, the slaves. Man, wife, grown daughter (wife of the one who’d bought his freedom), and two sons, ten and twelve. Never known any other life. Doctor bought ’em as a young couple and kept ’em together ’til he bought the young man, thinkin’ to start a new generation.” His face showed his consternation with slaves who might run but didn’t.

Jesse went on with the tale. “If the slave catchers were still around, I figured I could throw ’em off if I drove back out in an empty buggy and turned south. The doctor thought it was worth a try, so I did it.”

Josiah interjected here. “We saw Jesse drive away, Mama and Lovely afraid he’d gone and left us. I wouldn’t blame him. His life in danger, but I knowed he wouldn’t do that.”

“I got out to the road, and there they were.” Jesse grimaced at the memory. “Guess they figured I’d just turned off to trick ’em. I smiled, tipped my hat and turned south, back the way we’d come. They followed me, again about a quarter of a mile back. I drove all the way to the Easterbrook place. I can tell you I was nervous. I went in to Easterbrook’s to see if my friends would get tired and leave, but they didn’t. Easterbrook and I watched them from the parlor window, hanging around out on the road. It looked like they were fixing to follow me all the way to Harrisonburg.”

Listening, I made a firm decision never to let Jesse go off south again. Life was dangerous enough right here in Pennsylvania. I wondered how I would have acted in the same circumstances. If I’d have been as calm as Jesse.

“Mr. Easterbrook was pretty sure they were trying to wait me out to see if I went back for the slaves. So I decided to lay low for a few days, hoping they’d get tired of that game. The Easterbrooks set up a plan to let Josiah know what I was about. Mrs. Easterbrook and their two daughters set off to Moorefield to shop the next day. On the way they stopped at Dr. Woodruff’s and told Josiah to stay put until he heard from me.”

“I’s glad to get any word,” Josiah added. “I’s thinking on heading out by myself with Mama and Lovely. Feared Jesse was dead.”

Jesse nodded and continued. “In the meantime, I thought the best way to shake those three for good was to drive to Harrisonburg, as though I really did come from there. Easterbrook was afraid they might jump me anyway, especially if they thought I’d been paid for those slaves. So he and his oldest son went with me, each of us with a shotgun across our knees. When those louts saw the shotguns, they followed us for a short while and then turned off as though they had business elsewhere.”

“We stayed overnight in Harrisonburg on Second Day, then drove back to Easterbrook’s on Third Day without seeing them again. I set out as early as I could on Fourth Day morning, picked up my charges and headed for Moorefield. We pushed on through the night to Romney. I was through with daylight travel, even on those mountain roads.”

“The nights scary, too,” Amanda added.

“Depends on what you scared of, man or beast.” Josiah laughed.

“Once we got to Romney, we were passed from one station to the next, mostly at night, and here we are,” Jesse concluded. “We met a good batch of conductors on this trip.” He picked up his plate of cold eggs and continued eating with a ravenous appetite.

The story over, Amos stood up and stretched. “I hope this has been a lesson to thee, Jesse, not to bother with this anymore.” He shook a finger in Jesse’s direction. “It gets more dangerous every day. We were worried near to death about thee.”

Jesse nodded between bites. “I know, but it’ll give me some good stories to pass on to my grandchildren.”

“If thee has any. They don’t come without effort, you know,” Amos observed, heading for the ladder to the lower barn. “Now I have chores. Nathaniel?”

T
he group fell silent.
A horse whinnied. The sounds of creaking leather and restless hooves penetrated the barn. Nathaniel looked out, turned, and waved the Negroes away. Jesse herded the two women up the ladder, and Josiah, lithe as a cat, sprang to the side of the barn door, lifting a corn knife from a peg.

“Hello, the barn,” came a call. “We know you’re in there. We know you got niggers, too. Send them out and we won’t be no trouble to you.”

Inside the barn, I pulled Abby aside. “Go downstairs and out through the barnyard. Keep the corn crib between you and them. Once you’re out of sight, run and get Ben and Elias. Tell Papa to lay low.”

Abby nodded and climbed down the ladder. She moved quickly, and seconds later I peeked through a crack and saw her edging the yard, skirts hiked up, running like a deer.

Once Abby was clear, I stepped out beside Nathaniel, who was still arguing with the slave catchers. They were a rough looking lot—grimy, ragged, unkempt, smelling of tobacco, liquor, and horse manure. Their poor, neglected mounts looked as though they’d been pushed hard and fed little.

“What is this about?” I asked with authority. “What do you mean, coming here making wild accusations?”

“Ain’t no wild accusations. We been trackin’ that guy with the crippled arm all the way from Harrisonburg. Thought he lost us, but he didn’t.”

“There are no Negroes here.”

“Yes, they is. We seen them turn in here last night. Seen you greetin’ them with a lantern. Figured we might as well get some rest and wait ‘til mornin’ to take ‘em back.”

I figured the trio for a father and two sons, weary from the long ride. There was a sharp meanness about them. I didn’t doubt they meant to get what they came for.

“You can search the barn if you like,” Nathaniel offered, hoping the hiding place wouldn’t be discovered.

“I ain’t going to search nothing,” the older man maintained. “You’re going to give them over is what’s going to happen. We know you’re with that Underground Railroad. We know every place you stopped since Harrisonburg.” His saddle creaked as he shifted his weight.