Redfield Farm: A Novel of the Underground Railroad (5 page)

Nate stirred in his sleep, turned over and slowly woke to the lantern light casting huge shadows on the wall. “Huh? What’s goin’ on?” He squinted.

“There’s a delivery in the wagon outside. Take care of it and the horses,” Jesse whispered, his eyes dazed.

Nathaniel rose immediately, pulled on his trousers and boots, and descended sleepily into the kitchen. I heard the door close as I helped Jesse to the bed. He fell heavily, his breathing raspy. I pulled off his clothes, perspiring from the effort even though the room was cold.

J
esse’s fever raged for days.
He wavered in and out of consciousness while I worried over him, tried to make him comfortable, tried to figure out what ailed him. Out in the barn, the black man lay just as ill. Tending them both was a huge task, but it was clear that no one else should be exposed, both for the risk of disease and the risk of discovery. The sole responsibility fell to me, and my experience with illness was limited. The Redfields were a healthy lot, isolation doing its part to protect us from most things that went around.

For more reasons than one, I felt it best for Betsy to go stay with Mary for a while, so Amos hitched up the team that first morning and drove her over to Osterburg himself. He returned around noon, solemn faced and looking wary.

“We’d best leave the man in the barn for now. He seems right sick. He should be passed along tonight, but we don’t have a choice. We’ll have to keep him until he’s well. Anything else would be murder, to him and maybe others.”

I nodded. I was preoccupied with Jesse, but once I’d done all I could to make him comfortable, I went to the barn with an armload of quilts and a kettle of hot water. I wanted to move the man onto a thicker pile of hay for more warmth and comfort, but he was too sick to move himself and too big for me to move, so I covered him with the quilts and forced some feverfew tea into him.

Jesse lay deathly ill for days. I feared so for him. Why did he do these things? Get himself into such dire straits? He could just as well mind his own business. Come and go on the farm and to Meeting. Why did he have to go looking for trouble? When his fever finally broke, he was still too weak to get up.

The slave’s fever raged on. I did my best to make him comfortable in the barn where it was easier to hide him. One never knew when visitors might come to the house, or when Pru Hartley would wander by, watching. Jesse had shivered and shaken quietly, but this one was given to moaning and thrashing. He was too sick to speak, but I felt the fear and helplessness in his eyes as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

“Get Nathaniel to help you. The nights are too cold in the barn. He needs to be in here.” He laid his head back on the pillow and rested.

Jesse pointed, and I ran my fingers along the wall, until I felt a catch under the molding. I slipped it aside and two of the wide boards swung out, revealing a space large enough for a man to crawl through. The hinges were neatly concealed, and no knob betrayed its presence. So that was the reason for Jesse’s ‘fixing up!’

After dinner that evening, under cover of darkness, Nathaniel and I went to the barn and told the man we were moving him to the house.

“I’se grateful,” he mumbled. “It so cold here. You sure it safe?” It was the first time anything sensible had come out of him.

Nate nodded as we lifted him into a sitting position, then to his knees. He was a strapping young man in his late twenties or early thirties. He leaned heavily on Nathaniel and twice nearly collapsed before I could get my shoulder under his other arm. Together we half carried, half dragged him across the yard and into the house. Truly he was sicker than Jesse.

Getting him up the narrow, curved staircase and through Nathaniel’s room to Jesse’s was almost more than Nathaniel and I could manage. I’d made a pallet on the floor under the eaves, and when we laid the man down, his heavy breathing filled the room. As long as there was no one around, we kept the passage open for light and heat. I did what I could to make him comfortable, but his condition stayed as it was, wavering between life and death. I feared the move might bring an end to him.

Jesse stayed in bed for several more days, and I waved off visitors with warnings of the fever. We didn’t know what to name the illness, but we knew it was bad. I felt a little hot and light headed myself, but that was probably because I was so tired.

One frosty morning, as I went to the springhouse, I was caught up quick by the sight of Pru Hartley, bent beneath a load of firewood, walking up the road.

“Mornin’, Pru,” I said without enthusiasm, hoping she wouldn’t stop to talk. She did. Lowering her load, she looked at me in that sidelong way she had, making me wish I’d slipped into the springhouse unnoticed.

“Mornin’, Ann. How’s Jesse? I hear tell he’s ailin’.”

“Getting better now, but it might be catching. Better stay back.”

“Uh huh.” She stood beside the load of wood, holding her back in a peculiar way. Even under her heavy cloak, I could tell she was with child.

“Who would you suggest? One of my brothers? My Pa? Ain’t likely.” She bent down to rearrange the wood. “House is cold. Pa’s drunk. Brothers is gone—sleepin’ wherever they can. No one to do fer ‘em but me.”

It occurred to me to give her a gentle lecture on the fruits of the choices she’d made, but I decided against it. She wouldn’t listen anyway.

“You go on home. I’ll send Nathaniel down with a load of wood this afternoon.”

She brightened. “Now, that’s right neighborly of you. I sure could use the help.” Then, true to her nature, she added, “Not bein’ rich, like you.”

My budding compassion faded and I stepped into the spring house as Pru lifted her burden and set out for home.

The Hartleys were part of the landscape of our lives. Rad was a ‘good for nothing’, as Papa said, and he’d sired ten more like himself. His wife had been pretty once, according to Aunt Alice Grainger, but ten children, though they hadn’t killed her, had worn her down. She faded away so gradually, died so quietly, folks hardly noticed, five years ago. Rad went on as before, bingeing and recovering, bingeing and recovering.

The three oldest boys had places of their own, if you could call them that. Smith, the oldest, lived with his wife’s folks down by the millpond. Weaver survived doing odd jobs and taking care of the Friends Cemetery. He lived in a shack at the edge of the graveyard with his wife and half a houseful of young ones. Even ‘Fallen Away’ Quakers were taken care of by the Friends. Miller Hartley came as close as any of them to being of some account. He boarded with Franklin Adams, working on their farm, and, some said, fixing to marry into the family as soon as Frank’s oldest daughter, Eve, was ripe. The two youngest boys, Cooper and Sawyer, still lived at home and worked out—whatever odd jobs came their way and didn’t disturb their rest.

Pru was the youngest; all four of her older sisters were married and gone. Truth, Honesty, Faith and Charity were scattered about the county, producing babies at an alarming rate, giving whole communities pause about being overrun with ‘Hartleys’, as the children were known, whatever their last names happened to be.

I watched Pru’s progress down over the hill with a mixture of pity and discomfort. There was no changing some people, but it was still hard to understand how they could let themselves get so low. I turned back up the path to the house.

Ï

“What is this sickness? How did you get it?” I asked Jesse when he was well enough to make any sense.

“In the last station, the whole family was down with it. They thought to get the Negro out before he caught it, and he seemed all right when we left, but he started to cough almost as soon as we were on the road,” Jesse explained.

“I got there early in the afternoon the day before, so I’d look like a visitor, but some slave catchers were seen in the neighborhood, so I stayed another day. I was afraid of getting sick but more afraid of the slave catchers.” He shook his head.

“I started feeling sick about two in the morning on the way home, but he was already shaking from the chills. I knew we were in trouble.”

I felt Jesse’s forehead. “If he doesn’t get well soon, it’ll be too late to send him on. Then what’ll we do?”

“Whatever we have to do. First, get him well. Then we’ll worry about what’s next.”

Jesse rallied slowly, staying abed for more than two weeks. One morning, I heard a horse ride up and looked out the window to see Elias Finley dismount. I hurried to the dooryard to head him off.

“It is. Cough, chills, aches. Very sick. We missed First Day Meeting the last two weeks, and we’ll miss this week, too, I’m guessing. We don’t want to pass it around.”

“Well, I just came to tell you and Jesse that I’m going to Chambersburg to stay with a friend of my Uncle James for a while. He has a fine horse farm where I can learn something about breeding. Maybe go on a few buying trips with him. Ben and I need some brood mares.”

“Yes, and you in mine.” He stood there, hat in hand, maybe twenty feet away, looking uncomfortable, as though there was something else he wanted to say. “I’d best be going, then.”

“Yes. Good-bye, Elias. Godspeed. Don’t forget me.” It was a hollow plea, considering how I felt. Empty at the prospect of long days without him.

He turned, his left foot poised in the stirrup. “I could never forget you, Ann.”

The words sent a thrill through me. I loved Elias Finley. I always had. He was slow in his ways, but I knew deep inside that he was the man for me. Time was fleeting, but ahead lay the promise of a shared life, a home, babies, maybe even a measure of wealth. I watched him mount his horse, turn and ride out of the dooryard, his shoulders square against the sky. A trickle of joy began in my feet and spread to my face. I felt warm all over..

Back in the house, I worked in the kitchen, giving myself leave to think about Elias. Sad that he’d be gone so long, but hopeful that his return would bring what I most longed for. I felt like a schoolgirl, all silly and breathless. It was childish, but my dreams overwhelmed me sometimes.

I quickly filled a glass from the pitcher and bent down to crawl into the hiding place. The black man stared as though he’d never seen me before.