Redfield Farm: A Novel of the Underground Railroad (2 page)

“Rachel!” I called. “Your turn!”

Rachel’s response, coming from over the brow of the hill above the cabin, sounded far away. “I’m here!”

‘
You’re there and I’m here’
, I thought. I continued the numbing work of churning, with only slim hope that Rachel would actually come and relieve me. Blonde and blue eyed, she held a special place in our father’s heart. Not that he didn’t love the rest of us. He did. But Rachel didn’t have to earn her love. It was her birthright for being beautiful.

I churned on as the shadows lengthened, and Papa, passing me on his way in from the barn, reached down and patted my head. “Thee is our industrious one, Ann,” he said. “Thee was well made for a life of work.”

I knew it was a compliment, but it didn’t feel like one. I wondered how it might feel to be Rachel—light hearted and happy all the time. Everybody’s favorite—pretty, smiling, full of charm and laughter, and oft excused for idleness. But I could have a worse lot in life. I could be Pru Hartley, wearing flour sack dresses and fighting with nine brothers and sisters for every scrap.

I felt the butter coming, so I kept up a steady rhythm, though my arms and back ached. I stopped counting when it was clear Rachel wouldn’t relieve me. Slowly, slowly the butter came.

“Mama! It’s butter!”

Mary crossed the yard with a large wooden bowl and two paddles, and we poured off the whey into a pail for the pigs and cleaned out the churn, piling the butter in the bowl.

“This will taste so good on my fresh bread,” Mary smiled. I dragged the churn back to the springhouse for washing while Mary carried the bowl of butter inside.

By the time I was back, the table was set for supper, with two benches on either side. Papa was already seated at the head, and Mother was dishing out stew from the kettle over the fireplace.

Jesse and Ben appeared in the doorway in time to scoop up three-year-old Nathaniel and five-year-old Elizabeth and set them on the end of each bench closest to Mama. The Amos Redfield family sat to eat, three boys on one bench and four girls on the other.

We observed a silent grace, which was way too long, by my way of thinking. I kept looking up to see if Papa had raised his head yet. He finally did, cut off a chunk of bread and slathered it with butter. He took the first bite, the signal that it was all right to eat. We dove in, to the clinking of spoons on pewter plates.

Jesse was bursting to tell his news. He squirmed in his seat, watching Papa for a sign that it was all right to speak. Amos nodded to him.

“And when Uncle Sammy and us got to the creek, we looked high and low and couldn’t find them. So we started back, and then we saw Zeke Barnes sittin’ on the fence by the Alum Bank School. He said he was guardin’ two Negroes locked in the school for Charlie Marsh and Rad Hartley.”

“Locked in the school?”

“Yes, sir. Seems Charlie and Rad come upon those two Negroes right after me and Ann saw them and told them they’d hide them in the school until it was safe. Then they lit out to Bedford to look for a slave catcher they saw there yesterday. He was offerin’ a reward for two slaves escaped from North Carolina.” Jesse was breathless with telling the story. Then Ben took it up.

“While we were standin’ there talkin’ to Zeke, along come Rad and Charlie with the slave catcher. He got chains out of his saddle bags and had the two of them chained up in no time. They tried to fight him off, but Zeke and Rad and Charlie helped him. He gave Rad and Charlie a twenty dollar gold piece each! They gave Zeke a dollar for guardin’ them!”

“Uncle Sammy was furious,” Jesse added. “He didn’t say anything, but you know how he looks when he’s mad. Like a cock rooster, red faced and raised hackles!”

I listened in silence, my mind racing. So that’s what Pru Hartley was doing down by the creek! She’d seen those Negroes, same as us. She’d gone and told her no account daddy about them, and now look what had happened!

Papa listened to the boys’ account, expressionless. Once or twice his eyes met Mama’s and looked away. He, too, was full of anger—anger that would come out. This week, next week, a month from now, he would stand up in Meeting and hold forth about the evil curse that was slavery.

But Rad Hartley and Charlie Marsh wouldn’t be there to hear it. They weren’t Friends—at least not anymore. Rad had been read out of meeting for his drinking, and Mama said the rest of the family had fallen away. I pictured the Hartleys, all twelve of them—all tow headed—standing on an overhang above the creek, with the water eating away underneath them, falling away. Still, Friends would be exhorted to have nothing to do with Rad or Charlie. Not to hire them or buy anything from them or loan them anything. There would be a price to pay for their treachery.

Jesse’s face was red with anger as he and Ben related the picture of the slave trader riding off toward the south with the two black men in tow, heads bowed, stumbling along, hands shackled behind their backs, metal collars linked by chains about their necks.

I could see it as sure as if I’d been there. My heart quickened. I knew even then that all human beings should be treated with respect, even the likes of Zeke and Rad and Charlie. Even them—and Pru. Hard though it might be.

That was the start of it. The first time I ever heard tell of black slaves running away from their masters and white people helping them do it. Little did I know where the knowledge, and my brother Jesse, would take me.

P
ru Hartley wasn’t through with me.
Not by a long shot. The Hartley clan lived down over the hill on the other side of the creek. You couldn’t see their tumbledown cabin from Redfield Farm, but it was there. The evidence was all around us—a chicken missing from the coop, a sickle left lying around disappeared—Papa said they’d steal anything they could carry. There was plain meanness in that bunch, and, for me especially, Pru. She knew how uncomfortable she made me and relished it.

Mama died in childbirth with her eighth baby when I was twelve, leaving Papa with seven children to finish raising. The baby, a boy, died, too. Mary was sixteen, so she had most of the work, but I did almost as much. Ben and Jesse helped with the farm, and Mary and I cooked, cleaned and looked after the younger ones, Betsy and Nathaniel, without a lot of help from Rachel, who at ten, had a long way to go toward growing up.

Mary was kind, a lot like Mama. I didn’t realize it then, of course. It was only later that I would look at her and see Mama in her expression or gestures. But she grew up fast, and by the time she was twenty, in 1844, the young men were coming to court. Once they started standing around looking cow-eyed at Meeting, I knew her time with us was short. A young fellow from Osterburg came along—tall, red faced, good humored. His name was Noah Poole, and he was a Friend. That was a good thing. Amos Redfield didn’t hold with his daughters marrying out.

Anyway, it wasn’t long before Mary was gone off to Osterburg to be a wife, and not long after that that she was also a mother. So I was left in charge. I thought it temporary, thought I’d be married by the time I was twenty, but I was wrong. I learned ‘temporary’ can be a very long time.

Rachel never did step up. Bless her, she just came for the fun. I would have liked more help. Sixteen is young to shoulder it all. Rachel wasn’t a bad sort—not a mean bone in her body. But she never saw what was right in front of her. The work, I mean. She could sit down beside a pile of clothes to be ironed and tell you all about her visit with Cousin Eva Blackburn and never take notice. Everybody liked her, so I kept still, but I can tell you it was hard.

Now when Papa claimed his seat at the table there was no one at the other end. Three sons on one side, three daughters on the other. Then, one spring evening in 1847, Ben gave out with an announcement.

Amos didn’t respond. Losing a son on a farm was serious business. He looked at his plate. Around the table Ben’s announcement was greeted with giggles from the girls, a whoop from Nathaniel, and more teasing from Jesse.

“You old fox, Ben!” he grinned. “I saw you and Rebecca Finley eyeing each other, but I thought marriage was a long way off!” He jabbed an elbow into Ben’s ribs.

Ben reddened. “Well, I’m twenty-five. Best get started,” he muttered.

I agreed. It had been a long time coming, too. How was I supposed to get married with both of my older brothers still single? At nineteen, I had designs, but it wouldn’t seem right to just up and leave. Anyway, I said
I
had designs. Didn’t say anyone else had.

Amos nodded gravely. “Where do thee think thee will take up?”

“Conway has his farm for sale. Plans to go west. I’ve got some money saved. I can pay for half now and half in three years. He says it suits him.”

“Ain’t much of a farm,” Amos observed.

“I plan to make it a horse farm. Raise horses, breed ’em, sell ’em. There’s lots of pasture land, and on the big field I could grow oats.”

“Not yet, but he’s got some breeding stock. That working pair of his is as fine a team as I’ve ever seen.” Ben’s eyes lit up when he talked about horses.

Ben reddened again, and I smiled to myself. Having Ben and Rebecca Finley living a half mile away was a fine arrangement. But having Rebecca’s brother, Elias, working with Ben was even finer. Elias was part of my design. We’d known each other all our lives, and been paired off in the minds of many since Mary wed. We were friends, but I hoped someday we’d be more than that.

Amos moved back from the table, stood and offered his hand to Ben. “Be fruitful and multiply” was all he said before taking his hat from a peg by the door and stepping out into the spring evening.

Rachel, Betsy, and I rose and cleared the table. I handed Nathaniel a bucket to fetch in water from the spring. Jesse clapped an arm around Ben’s shoulders and walked him out the back door. When the water was hot enough to wash dishes, I left Rachel and Betsy to the task and climbed the narrow, curving steps to the loft, passing through the boys’ room into the room we three girls shared. There were two beds: Rachel and Betsy slept in one; I had the other to myself since Mary left. Lined up along one wall were three wooden trunks, one for each of us.

I opened mine, rummaging through clothes: two grey dresses, two bonnets, a shawl, stockings, under things and a quilt top I’d pieced. Maybe with a little help and hurry, it could be a wedding gift for Ben and Rebecca. I inspected it with a new eye. It would do, but I’d have to hurry to finish it in two months. I heard Jesse downstairs teasing the girls about getting the dishes clean. I called him.

“Natty and I’ll build them a settle for sitting by the fire. One like Uncle Sammy’s that makes down into a table. I have some wood drying in the barn that’ll do.”

“He’ll be good at it, too. You’ve seen the two of them after meeting. Heads together, talking horses all afternoon. Elias knows good horses, and if I’m not mistaken,” he said slyly, “he knows good women, too!”

“Jesse, hush!” I swatted at him with the quilt top as he ducked down the stairs. I sat alone in the gathering darkness, feeling warm and happy. Life promised much.

May and June sped by with the planting and haying. There was never a shortage of work on a farm, but hopefully many hands to lighten it. Farm families rotated around the community, helping each other with the plowing, planting and haying. The women pulled together to feed the hungry workers. Older girls tended the little ones. Older boys helped the men.