Stealing Freedom (7 page)

“Who's moving to Rockville?” Augustus asked.

Richard stared hard at Augustus, then at Addison, then at Joseph, then at Ann. They each watched him, wondering why he looked so confused. “
You
are!” he blurted out. “Didn't my brother tell you?”

Ann's eyes widened. Certainly, one need only have walked by Master Charles once or twice in the past month to overhear him complaining about his debts, and how farming was no way to make a living, and how he was ready to try something else. But Ann had never suspected he would move away from Unity to do it.

“Are you telling us a story?” Augustus scowled at Richard.

“I'm telling you the truth!” Richard insisted. “I heard my brother say, plain as day, he's fixing to sell the last of the harvest and the animals, and move to Rockville.”

Ann found herself grinning at the news. Rockville!

“Do they really have a jail there?” Joseph wanted to know.

“And the county fair—can anyone go, or just the white folks?” Addison asked.

Ann elbowed Addison. “That's the fair Hannah and David went to last year. Of course anyone can go.”

Richard answered their questions and told them about the fine houses on Montgomery Avenue and on Washington Street; houses that stood so close to each other, folks could look into each other's windows. He told how he'd driven in a carriage near enough the jailhouse to see it, though he didn't know if there was a prisoner inside at the time.

The discussion with Richard, and later with her family, fueled a growing excitement in Ann. The county fair, as she'd heard about it from her cousins, sounded like the most wonderful experience imaginable. She would be sad to leave Unity, but moving to Rockville would be a grand adventure. Ann had a whole week of dreaming, from that snowy Sunday until the next warm, muddy Saturday. She imagined her mother being allowed to make her own jam, with her name on the jar, to enter in the women's cooking competition at the fair. She imagined Augustus entering the plowing races and winning first prize for Master Charles. She imagined going to the market for Mistress Carol and walking on the streets next to the fine houses. She had a week of dreaming and hoping and planning before everything changed.

Master Charles was in a horrid state all week, shouting orders, threatening with the whip, and forcing her father and brothers to work from before dawn until after sunset with
hardly five minutes to take their meals. He drove them to shell mountains of corn, press and weigh piles of tobacco, and load all this, along with many sacks of wheat, into his own wagon and his father's. It was as if he was determined to sell off all of his harvest on one market day and leave nothing for them to eat for the rest of the winter.

Very early Saturday morning, with the stars still shining in the sky, Lizzy's husband, Tom, knocked on their door and said Master Charles wanted the boys to come help unload the sacks and barrels at market. They were headed to Baltimore with the two wagons and could not be expected to arrive home before very late that night. Tom promised to have Joseph and Addison ride with him in Master William's wagon, and to keep an eye on them while they were in Baltimore. Augustus would ride with Master Charles and was old enough to watch out for himself. Arabella worried at the thought of her young boys spending the day in such a large, unpredictable city. Tom just laughed and said Baltimore wasn't anything but a small town that liked to put on airs.

There was no time to cook breakfast, but Tom said he had a big enough slab of cold cornmeal mush to share with the boys. Ann rubbed her eyes as she watched Tom lead the sleepy crew up the hill to the barn. Most of the snow from last Sunday had melted, and the ground was an ugly mix of dirty snow and slushy earth. It was exactly the kind of mix that likes to suck wagon wheels into it, and make a trip to Baltimore and back take two or three days instead of one. Ann was glad her brothers had taken their blankets with them.

It was a scene Ann would never forget: Tom with his arm around Joseph, Addison and Augustus trudging next to them,
the four heads bobbing as they made their way up the hill in the moonlight, shoulders hunched under the blankets that minutes before had covered their sleeping forms.

Saturday night, it was the mud they blamed it on. “Those wagons were weighed down so heavy, they probably had to push them all the way to Baltimore,” said her father. “We'll see them sometime in the morning, I reckon.”

Sunday at church, Lizzy was worried, too; and they blamed it on the rain clouds that threatened. “I suppose Master Charles had best get himself a room at an inn,” said Arabella. “If it rains and those roads get any muddier, they'll get stuck for sure.”

When Monday dawned sunny and dry, and the mud crusted over and cracked, they searched for something else to blame. “Maybe they broke a wheel…” her father began, then trailed off.

By evening Ann's mother had begun a nervous pacing, the way she did when her insides told her something was wrong.

“Mamma, come sit,” said Catharine. “They're with Tom and Master Charles. They'll be all right.”

But Arabella wouldn't sit, and it turned dark without anyone going to bed. When they heard the knock at the door, they stumbled over one another to get to it. Tom stood on their doorstep, his clothes caked with mud, his face streaked with tears.

“Where are they?” her father demanded, his voice choked into a growl.

“Gone… Sold… to Alabama.” The words sliced Ann's heart.

As Ann's father crumpled to his knees, Arabella's voice rose in a wail—one word, “No!” drawn out like the cry of wind through dead trees.

No blessings.

Ann could find no hidden blessings in the loss of her brothers—not in the empty places beside her in the sleeping loft, not in her mother's stricken face, not in the defeated way her father held his shoulders, and not in the silence that surrounded every mealtime because each of them was too heartsick to speak.

As she went about her work, the rhythm of it was heavy and dull. It was as though someone else's hands washed the linens, curried and brushed the horses, and chopped turnips for dinner at the tavern. At night she, Catharine, and Benjamin held hands as they fell asleep, as if the others might disappear before morning.

Sometimes they talked about her brothers the way those left living talk about the dead. “Remember how Addison used to pucker up his face and look like old Aunt Stella when he ate sour cherries?” her mother would ask. Or, “Remember how Augustus used to tease Lizzy's Rachel and make her blush?”

And sometimes they were angry. Ann's mother would spit out words about how Master Charles had no right. Her father
would pound the rungs into the chairs he built with such vengeance that, more than once, he split the wood. And Ann found herself, in her mind's eye, wielding a horsewhip to open up bloody slices on Master Charles's pale, freckled back.

Then, just as the lengthening days and warmer nights inspired the first spring peepers to begin their noisemaking, Ann's father stopped mourning and started making plans. At breakfast one morning he pushed back his chair. “At seventy-five cents a Sunday working for Mrs. Griffith, I'll be in my grave before I've saved enough to buy this family,” he said. “I'm going to talk to Cousin David. He helped Uncle Abram and Aunt Mimi to find freedom, and Lord willing he'll be able to help us.”

He told Master Charles he'd work for him Sunday to make up for today, and left to walk to Rockville. Ann, her mother, and Catharine waited up for him. When he returned late that night, he was weary but filled with hope. “There are folks who can help us,” he said.

He told them about free blacks and white people, many of them Quakers, who had formed “Vigilance Committees.” They helped fugitives travel north and also worked to raise money to buy slaves for freedom. If he went to the Vigilance Committee in New York, the folks who had helped Uncle Abram and Aunt Mimi, and told them about their family's case, he was sure they would help. “If Master Charles won't let this family be together in slavery,” he said, “then we'll join it back together in freedom.”

Freedom. Legally. Without fear of capture. Ann was almost afraid to believe it could be true.

In Rockville, John had gone to the courthouse and secured a permit that would allow him to leave Montgomery County and return, as long as he did so within thirty days. If he did not return within thirty days, he wouldn't be allowed to come back into Montgomery County at all. There was no time to waste.

Arabella and Catharine cooked a new batch of cornmeal mush while Ann filled gourds with water. John took the money box down from its shelf and emptied the contents into a rag, which he then tied securely and placed under his shirt. He would walk to Baltimore, and then buy a train ticket to New York. Ann and Catharine both gave him the pennies they'd received at Christmas. He tried to refuse, but Catharine gave him an impatient look and asked, “What could we possibly want more than our own and our brothers’ freedom?”

Under his shirt he also slipped his freedman's papers. Even more precious than the coins, they must stay well hidden. It was too easy—and too common—for a thief to steal and burn free papers, and sell the free person into slavery with no one there to object.

When the cornmeal mush had cooled, Catharine bundled slices of it in clean cloths for him to carry. They hugged him and kissed him and wished him well. Arabella asked what she should say to Master Charles when he found out in the morning that John was gone.

“Tell him I've gone to see friends,” John said. “And that I figured since he no longer needed the help of my sons, he must not be in need of my help, either.”

Ann knew her mother would never say such a brazen thing
to Master Charles, but it made her feel good to hear the strength in her father's words. She gave him one last embrace, and breathed deeply of the smell of fire that clung to his shirt. Then he disappeared into the night.

“Catharine, quickly, bring me your soiled rags!” Ann's mother watched something outside the window—something that made her jaw grind.

“I'll wash them myself, Mamma,” said Catharine. “I always do—”

“No, you won't. Bring them to me! Ann Maria, fill the washtub,
hurry!”

Ann and her sister scurried to obey. The washtub lay upside down next to the house, draining from Saturday night baths. Ann turned it over. Then she fetched the water she'd carried from the spring that morning and poured it in. Her mother rushed out of the house and dumped the rags into the basin. As she swirled them around, the water turned a deep, clear crimson.

“Good afternoon, Mistress Carol,” Ann's mother called with a strained cheerfulness.

Ann looked up to see the mistress picking her way down the muddy path in the slanting late-afternoon sunlight.

“You caught me washing my soiled rags while my husband is away,” Arabella said loudly.

Mistress Carol eyed the dark water, then stared hard at Arabella. She cleared her throat and spoke. “I've come to tell you a whole host of cattlemen have arrived at the tavern and I want you to make supper immediately.” Then she turned and
trudged back up the hill, placing her feet gingerly on each step as if disgusted by the rich, moist earth and newly sprouted spring weeds.

When the mistress was out of earshot, the complaining started.

“That's not fair, Mamma. Those people shouldn't be traveling on the Sabbath.”

“You're supposed to work six days for them, not seven.”

And from Benjamin, “Who will cook our supper?”

But Ann's mother ignored their comments. “That greedy witch,” she growled. “She's sticking her nose in my business, asking me isn't it time I had another child, watching my belly like a vulture.” Sweat broke out on her face.

“Come inside, Mamma,” said Catharine, taking her hand and leading her.

She and Ann helped Arabella to a chair. Ann rinsed a clean rag in cold water and wiped her mother's brow. Benjamin stood next to Arabella and patted her knee. “Don't be sad, Mamma,” he said.

Arabella's hands shook. “She won't take this one from me. Not to the auction block, and not to a fever from this cold, leaky shack.”

Ann and Catharine stared at each other, surprised. Then Catharine shook her head as a sign for them to continue comforting their mother rather than take the time to be shocked by her announcement.

Ann wiped her mother's arms with the cool rag. “It'll be all right, Mamma,” she said. “Papa will be home soon, and he'll bring help.”

After Ann, along with her mother, Catharine, Lizzy, and Rachel, had broken the Sabbath by cooking supper for the largest, dirtiest, most foul-talking group of cattlemen who had ever passed through the tavern, she found Richard sitting on the stone wall outside. He was whittling a small Y-shaped branch, which he could barely see because dusk was quickly turning to night.

“Evening,” he said, not looking up.

Ann shifted her weight, not sure if she wanted to talk with him or go on home. Ever since her brothers had left, Ann had preferred to stay close to her family, and Sunday afternoons playing with Richard had abruptly ended.

“It's a new slingshot,” he said, referring to his handiwork.

Ann merely grunted.

They were silent for a while, save for the sound of Richard's knife scraping against the hard wood. Ann traced a circle in the dirt with her big toe.

“It's almost done.” Richard held up the slingshot for her to see.

Ann nodded, said good night, and left him to his work.

Ann's father arrived home looking thinner and older, but with a whirlwind of good news that took Ann's breath away. He'd met with the Reverend Charles Bennett Ray, a colored minister from New York, who was the director of the New York State Vigilance Committee. Reverend Ray was so moved by the story about Ann's brothers that he'd already begun to raise money to buy their freedom—and to buy freedom for the rest of the family, as well. Ray had also written to another colored minister, the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet, who was living in Scotland, asking him to raise money in Britain for the Weems family. Her father promised to include Benjamin in the purchase if they possibly could. Ann marveled at the thought of people she'd never met, living in faraway cities, giving money toward her freedom. And she marveled at the thought of freedom actually becoming hers.