There's a Dead Person Following My Sister Around (7 page)

I gave a sigh of relief.

Behind me someone screamed.

For a second I thought it was Vicki; it was a little girl's voice, there was no question. But Vicki wasn't there. Nobody was. The scream went on and on and on.

And then, in the dust on the floor, I could see footprints. Two sets of footprints. One, little-kid-sized. The other, an adult. No feet, no shimmer of ghostly presence. No sound of scuffling. Just the visible footprints. And the scream. Angry and frightened and very young. "No," she cried, and I remembered Vicki saying, "She can talk if she has to, but it's hard." "No, Mamma. No! No! NO!"

The adult was moving backward, apparently dragging the child away from me.

I jumped to my feet. "Stop it!" I yelled. "Leave her alone! What are you doing?"

I followed the footprints—much good that I could do. Five steps, six, seven.

And then the scream cut off like someone had hit a mute button. There was no step number eight. The footprints stopped in the middle of the floor.

I swiped at the empty space with Winifred's journal.

Not that I would have felt anything, even if Marella and the bad lady
were
still there.

But somehow, I had the feeling they weren't.

I HALF EXPECTED
to find the attic door closed and barricaded, but it was open, just the way I'd left it. Going down the stairs, I clutched the handrail, just in case the ghost decided to trip me or give a little shove from behind. No sign of her.

Downstairs looked totally normal, too. I settled myself onto the couch. The book smelled hot and dusty. My hands shook as I opened it to a random page, trusting that fate would direct me to the right passage.

The words
Marella, ghost,
and
dead
did not leap out at me.

I searched more closely.

The script was so fancy, it was hard to read, and it went from the very top of the yellowed page to the very bottom and from margin to margin, with no space between lines. Also, Great-Great-Grandmother Winifred
or her pen had had serious problems with blots. For a while I thought that Winifred was a really bad speller, but then I realized that what looked like long, tipping-over
fs
were really ss. Too bad they didn't have computers and printers back then, or, at least, typewriters. I struggled through the whole page, and all Winifred talked about was the weather (miserable) and how she was embroidering some hand towels for a charity bazaar at the church and how the woman who ran the bazaar—Leona something-or-other-that-I-couldn't-make-out—was a gossip with what Winifred called a "vicious tongue."

I skipped ahead a few pages, thinking maybe somebody killed off this Leona woman. But apparently not.

OK, so fate hadn't directed my hands to open the book at that particular spot. I leafed through the book, searching for when Vicki had first mentioned seeing Marella—mid-March—in case she had appeared because that day was the anniversary of her death. But I really didn't have much confidence in that idea. From 1851 to now wasn't a nice round number like one year, or one hundred years, or a thousand years: important numbers, significant anniversaries that might drag ghosts out of their graves.

Still, I read over the entries from around that time, just in case. More talk about the weather, and a complaint that the material she had bought for Rebekka's new dress had faded already.

Next I checked the date of Vicki's birthday, July 15, in case the ghosts were somehow tied to that, but there wasn't even an entry for that day; and the following day, Winifred just wrote—in especially illegible handwriting—that her rheumatism was so bad she could hardly move. That seemed to pretty well kill the ghosts-looking-at-the-calendar theory.

So I started from the beginning.

I didn't read every single passage, but I did at least skim every page.

The journal started in November, 1850, which was long before Great-Uncle Josiah sold off the greater portion of the land to become a tavern owner rather than be a farmer. This was while the Erie Canal still ran through our backyard, before sections of it fell into disrepair and were rerouted years later. So a lot of Winifred's entries talked about canal traffic and day-to-day events on a farm, and about her husband, Theodore, and their children, Rebekka and Jacob. Winifred didn't write about politics or runaway slaves or cleaning secret rooms. And she would have written about it if she'd done it. She wrote about everything. There were lots of entries that said things like:

Today I hung all the rugs on the line and beat them vigorously since this will probably be the last chance I shall have to do so before the weather becomes truly inclement. I noticed that the small braided rug from the
parlor had a few broken stitches, so I promptly mended it lest someone catch a heel.

I mean, Real Exciting Stuff.

But then, suddenly, February 10, Winifred caught my attention:

It is nine o'clock of the evening, and the children are asleep, and Theodore, if not asleep, is in bed also, and all is quiet, and still when I place my hand over my heart I can feel the rapid hammering of it against my ribs.

Bitsy, who has always sought out the most inconvenient places to lay her eggs, has most recently been nesting in the barn loft. This morning, when I went up there to look for eggs, I found a man, who had evidently entered our barn during the night and crawled into the straw for warmth. He was half covered with straw and all curled up tight in a ball so that, actually, my first impression was that it might be a child. At first I thought he must be dead, for he lay so still, and he was wearing nothing but rags despite the snow on the ground. I gave a cry of surprise and the man leaped to his feet, and that was when I saw that he was a full-grown man and a Negro, at that.

The only thing that kept me from calling out for help immediately was that the baling fork was ready at hand, and I placed it between us.

"
Canada?" the man asked. He had so thick an accent and his speech was so slurred from cold and sleep
that I did not truly understand until after he repeated himself, but still I heard the tone of hope in his voice. "Do this be Canada?" he asked.

"
No," I said, "this is our barn loft.
"

The look of hope became one of fear, despite that he loomed two feet taller than me, or at least he would have except that he was hunched over trying to keep warm. Our frosty breaths hung in the air between us.

He asked, "Abolitionist?
"

"
No," I said, and he sank, exhausted and defeated, to the floor. He wrapped his arms around himself and let his gaze also fall to the floor, as though he was saying, "Take me. I am too tired to try anymore.
"

I stood there in the barn loft thinking that he was a desperate fugitive and that I endangered my life not to call out to Theodore. Perhaps as soon as I turned my back he would lunge at me.

But he did not look capable of lunging. He did not look capable of walking. He looked cold and starving and frightened.

Still, I backed away from him rather than turning from him, and I kept the baling fork up for as long as I could till I reached the ladder going to the lower level.

"
Stay there," I said, because he had not yet looked up at me and he might not even be aware that I was leaving. "Don't come near me.
"

At my words, he did look up, the skin of his face darker than any I'd ever seen this close up, but his eyes the same as anybody else's.

Back in the house, I decided that I could cause no hurt by making the man some food. Even if the slave catchers had followed him and were about to descend on our house, he had to eat before they brought him back South to whatever place it was he'd run away from. I also decided that Theodore had enough old shirts that surely one could be spared. And if the Negro man should happen to wander away while I prepared food and sought clothing for him, so much the better.

But as soon as I walked in the door, I realized I was still holding the baling fork. Theodore, who'd been slicing the breakfast bread, looked up at me with concern and shooed the children away.

I worked at preparing a sandwich with thick slices of cold pork so that the children would not guess that we were talking about something we didn't want them to hear, which would fetch them underfoot faster than anything else in the world. "There is a runaway Negro slave in our barn loft," I whispered.

Theodore sighed. He said, "He was probably looking for the Stearnses' farmstead.
"

The Stearns are Quakers and everybody knows Quakers are all abolitionists.

I said, "He was looking for Canada.
"

"
Any sign of federal marshals or slave catchers?" Theodore asked. I shook my head, and he said, "One of us must ride out to fetch them.
"

"
I know," I said.

"
Otherwise," he pointed out, "with that new law, we
are responsible.
We
could face a thousand-dollar fine. Building this house cost less than a thousand dollars.
"

"
A thousand dollars is a great deal of money," I agreed.

"
And six months in jail," Theodore said.

"
Six months is a long time," I agreed. I pulled his heavy work shirt off the hook by the door and slung it over Theodore's arm. I handed him the sandwich. "Perhaps, if we're lucky, he has gone," I said.

But he wasn't gone.

And when Theodore saw that the Negro man's shoes were entirely worn through so that he'd been walking in the snow with what were essentially bare feet, he invited him into the house.

And when the man took off his ragged shirt to replace it with Theodore's shirt and we saw the whip scars, some discolored, some with the skin raised like permanent welts on his back, we told him he could spend the day, and at night we would put him in the cart and drive him to the Stearnses' farm.

All day long we waited for the slave catchers to come and catch us at what we were doing.

They came just as I was putting supper on the table.

Rebekka, who is very responsible for eight years old, had been staying in the front room so that she could catch an early glimpse and warn us of any visitors. She came running into the kitchen shouting, "Three men on horses.
"

At that time the runaway Negro was in the root
cellar, where they would be sure to find him if they forced their way in and searched the house.

Theodore told Rebekka, "Take Jacob downstairs and choose some fine juicy apples for supper." Rebekka nodded solemnly, knowing what was behind the words. To Jacob, Theodore said, "Do you think you can help your sister?" because four years old is too young to understand, and we knew Jacob would tell our new visitors about the black-skinned visitor who was also here today. Fortunately, Jacob was eager to help Rebekka.

The men who came were the slave owner and two professional slave catchers. The owner said he was looking for his runaway Nigro—that was how he said it, "Nigro." "A prime field slave," he said, "but ungrateful and uppity." I thought of the quiet dignity of the Negro man compared to the red-faced bluster of these three. It was easy to lie to them, to say we had seen nothing of any Negroes. They didn't demand to search the house and left shortly after arriving.

After supper we loaded the former slave onto our cart and covered him with old flour sacks. By that time we had given him two of Theodore's shirts, a blanket, a new pair of shoes, and all the food that would fit into his pockets.

I worried and worried while Theodore took him to the Stearnses' farm. It seemed he was gone forever, but when he came back, he said everything had gone smoothly. He had seen no one on the way and had tapped quietly on the door only after making sure there
was no sign of the slave catchers. He said Thomas Stearns seemed surprised at the late-evening visit, but once Theodore told him we'd had a surprise visitor in our barn, he grasped the situation immediately. "Let him come in," Theodore said he said, "and God be with thee for thy kindness.
"

It was a foolish risk, we both agreed, but the matter that most tugs at my conscience is, I never thought to ask the Negro man his name.

I REALIZED I'D BEEN
reading all in a rush. My heart was pounding and my hands were sweaty.
Sentimental jerk,
I told myself,
to get so caught up in things that happened a hundred and fifty years ago. Everybody
involved was long dead. The passage had explained a lot—such as that Grandma's secret room must have been added later or they wouldn't have needed to hide the runaway in the root cellar. But the passage did not explain what I needed to know.

I flipped through the next pages, looking for something that would help me, but all the while I was wondering,
Did he make it to Canada? He must have,
I thought; he was so close. It takes us a little more than an hour's drive (two, if Dad's behind the wheel rather than Mom), heading west toward Buffalo, then over one of the three or four bridges at Niagara Falls.