The Underground Railroad (17 page)

It was Martin’s turn to absent himself while Ethel assumed responsibility for their guest, nursing Cora through two days of fever and convulsions. The couple had made few friends during their time in the state, making it easier to abstain from the life of town. While Cora twisted in her delirium, Ethel read from the Bible to speed
her recuperation. The woman’s voice entered her dreams. So stern the night Cora emerged from the mine, it now contained a quality of tenderness. She dreamed the woman kissed her forehead, motherly. Cora listened to her stories, drifting. The ark delivered the worthy, bringing them to the other side of the catastrophe. The wilderness stretched for forty years before others found their promised
land.

The afternoon stretched the shadows like taffy and the park entered its period of diminished popularity as supper approached. Ethel sat in the rocking chair, smiled, and looked through the Scripture, trying to find an appropriate section.

Now that she was awake and could speak for herself, Cora told her host that the verses were unnecessary.

Ethel’s mouth formed a line. She closed the
book, one thin finger holding her place. “We are all in need of our Savior’s grace,” Ethel said. “It wouldn’t be very Christian of me to let a heathen into my house, and not share His word.”

“It has been shared,” Cora said.

It had been Ethel’s childhood Bible that Martin gave to Cora, smudged and stained by her fingers. Ethel quizzed Cora, dubious as to how much their guest could read and understand.
To be sure, Cora was not a natural believer, and her education had been terminated sooner than she wished. In the attic she had struggled with the words, pressed on, doubled back to difficult verses. The contradictions vexed her, even half-understood ones.

“I don’t get where it says, He that stealeth a man and sells him, shall be put to death,” Cora said. “But then later it says, Slaves should
be submissive to their masters in everything—and be well-pleasing.” Either it was a sin to keep another as property, or it had God’s own blessing. But to be well-pleasing in addition? A slaver must have snuck into the printing office and put that in there.

“It means what it says,” Ethel said. “It means that a Hebrew may not enslave a Hebrew. But the sons of Ham are not of that tribe. They were
cursed, with black skin and tails. Where the Scripture condemns slavery, it is not speaking of negro slavery at all.”

“I have black skin, but I don’t have a tail. As far as I know—I never thought to look,” Cora said. “Slavery is a curse, though, that much is true.” Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a
man.

Under the Georgia sun, Connelly had recited verses while scourging field hands for infractions. “Niggers, obey your earthly masters in everything and do it not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.” The slash of the cat-o’-nine-tails punctuating every syllable, and a wail from the victim. Cora remembered other passages
on slavery in the Good Book and shared them with her host. Ethel said she didn’t wake up that morning to get into a theological argument.

Cora enjoyed the woman’s company and frowned when she left. For her part, Cora blamed the people who wrote it down. People always got things wrong, on purpose as much as by accident. The next morning Cora asked for the almanacs.

They were obsolete, last year’s
weather, but Cora adored the old almanacs for containing the entire world. They didn’t need people to say what they meant. The tables and facts couldn’t be shaped into what they were not. The vignettes and parodies between the lunar tables and weather reports—about cranky old widows and simple darkies—confused her as much as the moral lessons in the holy book. Both described human behavior beyond
her ken. What did she know, or need to know, of fancy wedding manners, or moving a herd of lambs through the desert? One day she might use the almanac’s instructions, at least. Odes to the Atmosphere, Odes to the Cocoa-Tree of the South Sea Islands. She hadn’t heard of odes or atmospheres before, but as she worked through the pages, these creatures took up residence in her mind. Should she ever
own boots, she now knew the trick of tallow and wax that extended their use. If one of her chickens got the snuffles one day, rubbing asafetida in butter on their nostrils would set them straight.

Martin’s father had needed the almanacs to plan for the full moon—the books held prayers for runaways. The moon grew fat and thin, there were solstices, first frosts, and spring rains. All these things
proceeded without the interference of men. She tried to imagine what the tide looked like, coming in and going out, nipping at the sand like a little dog, heedless of people and their machinations. Her strength returned.

On her own, she couldn’t understand all the words. Cora asked Ethel, “Can you read some to me?”

Ethel growled. But she opened an almanac where the spine broke and in compromise
with herself used the same cadences she used for the Bible. “ ‘Transplanting the Evergreens. It seems not very material whether evergreen trees are transplanted in April, May, or June…’ ”

When Friday arrived, Cora was much improved. Fiona was set to come back on Monday. They agreed that in the morning Cora should return to the nook. Martin and Ethel would invite a neighbor or two for cake to
dispel any gossip or speculation. Martin practiced a wan demeanor. Perhaps even host someone for the Friday Festival. Their porch had a perfect view.

That evening Ethel let Cora stay in the extra bedroom, provided she kept the room dark and stayed away from the window. Cora had no intention of watching the weekly spectacle but looked forward to one last stretch in the bed. In the end, Martin
and Ethel thought better of inviting people over, so the only guests were the uninvited ones that stepped out of the crowd at the start of the coon show.

The regulators wanted to search the house.

The performance stopped, the town buzzing at the commotion at the side of the park. Ethel tried to stall the night riders. They pushed past her and Martin. Cora started for the stairs but they complained
reliably, warning her so often these last few months, that she knew she wouldn’t be able to make it. She crawled under Martin’s old bed and that’s where they found her, snatching her ankles like irons and dragging her out. They tossed her down the stairs. She jammed her shoulder into the banister at the bottom. Her ears rang.

She laid eyes on Martin and Ethel’s porch for the first time. It was
the stage for her capture, a second bandstand for the town’s amusement as she lay on the planks at the feet of four regulators in their white and black uniforms. Another four restrained Martin and Ethel. One more man stood on the porch, dressed in a worsted plaid vest and gray trousers. He was one of the tallest men Cora had ever seen, solidly built with an arresting gaze. He surveyed the scene
and smiled at a private joke.

The town filled the sidewalk and the street, jostling each other for a view of this new entertainment. A young redheaded girl pushed through. “Venezuelan pox! I told you they had someone up there!”

So here was Fiona, finally. Cora propped herself up for a look at the girl she knew so well but had never seen.

“You’ll get your reward,” the night rider with the beard
said. He’d been to the house on the previous search.

“You say, you lummox,” Fiona said. “You said you checked the attic last time, but you didn’t, did you?” She turned to the town to establish witnesses for her claim. “You all see—it’s my reward. All that food missing?” Fiona kicked Cora lightly with her foot. “She’d make a big roast and then the next day it was gone. Who was eating all that
food? Always looking up at the ceiling. What were they looking at?”

She was so young, Cora thought. Her face was a round and freckled apple, but there was hardness in her eyes. It was difficult to believe the grunts and cusses she’d heard over the months had come out of that little mouth, but the eyes were proof enough.

“We treated you nice,” Martin said.

“You have an awful queer way, both
of you,” Fiona said. “And you deserve whatever you get.”

The town had seen justice served too many times to count, but the rendering of the verdict was a new experience. It made them uneasy. Were they a jury now, in addition to the gallery? They looked at each other for cues. An old-timer made his hand into a cone and hollered nonsense through it. A half-eaten apple hit Cora’s stomach. On the
bandstand, the coon-show players stood with their disheveled hats in their hands, deflated.

Jamison appeared, rubbing his forehead with a red handkerchief. Cora had not seen him since the first night, but she had heard every speech of the Friday-night finales. Every joke and grandiose claim, the appeals to race and statehood, and then the order to kill the sacrifice. The interruption in the proceedings
confounding him. Absent its usual bluster, Jamison’s voice squeaked. “This is something,” he said. “Aren’t you Donald’s son?”

Martin nodded, his soft body quivering with quiet sobs.

“I know your daddy would be ashamed,” Jamison said.

“I had no idea what he was up to,” Ethel said. She tugged against the night riders who gripped her tight. “He did it himself! I didn’t know anything!”

Martin
looked away. From the people on the porch, from the town. He turned his face north toward Virginia, where he had been free of his hometown for a time.

Jamison gestured and the night riders pulled Martin and Ethel to the park. The planter looked Cora over. “A nice treat,” Jamison said. Their scheduled victim was in the wings somewhere. “Should we do both?”

The tall man said, “This one is mine.
I’ve made it clear.”

Jamison’s expression curdled. He was not accustomed to ignorance of his status. He asked for the stranger’s name.

“Ridgeway,” the man said. “Slave catcher. I go here, I go there. I’ve been after this one for a long time. Your judge knows all about me.”

“You can’t just come in here, muscling about.” Jamison was aware that his usual audience, milling outside the property,
observed him with undefined expectations. At the new tremor in his words two night riders, young bucks both, stepped forward to crowd Ridgeway.

Ridgeway exhibited no bother over the display. “You all have your local customs going on here—I get that. Having your fun.” He pronounced
fun
like a temperance preacher. “But it doesn’t belong to you. The Fugitive Slave Law says I have a right to return
this property to its owner. That’s what I aim to do.”

Cora whimpered and felt her head. She was dizzy, like she’d been after Terrance struck her. This man was going to return her to him.

The night rider who threw Cora down the stairs cleared his throat. He explained to Jamison that the slave catcher had led them to the house. The man had visited Judge Tennyson that afternoon and made an official
request, although the judge had been enjoying his customary Friday whiskey and might not remember. No one was keen on executing the raid during the festival, but Ridgeway had insisted.

Ridgeway spat tobacco juice on the sidewalk, at the feet of some onlookers. “You can keep the reward,” he told Fiona. He bent slightly and lifted Cora by her arm. “You don’t have to be afraid, Cora. You’re going
home.”

A little colored boy, about ten years old, drove a wagon up the street through the crowd, shouting at the two horses. On any other occasion the sight of him in his tailored black suit and stovepipe hat would have been a cause of bewilderment. After the dramatic capture of the sympathizers and the runaway, his appearance nudged the night into the realm of the fantastical. More than one
person thought what had just transpired was a new wrinkle in the Friday entertainment, a performance arranged to counter the monotony of the weekly skits and lynchings, which, to be honest, had grown predictable.

At the foot of the porch, Fiona held forth to a group of girls from Irishtown. “A girl’s got to look after her interests if she’s going to get ahead in this country,” she explained.

Ridgeway rode with another man in addition to the boy, a tall white man with long brown hair and a necklace of human ears around his neck. His associate shackled Cora’s ankles, and then ran the chains through a ring in the floor of the wagon. She arranged herself on the bench, her head pulsing in agony with every heartbeat. As they pulled away, she saw Martin and Ethel. They had been tied to the
hanging tree. They sobbed and heaved at their bonds. Mayor ran in mad circles at their feet. A blond girl picked up a rock and threw it at Ethel, hitting her in the face. A segment of the town laughed at Ethel’s piteous shrieks. Two more children picked up rocks and threw them at the couple. Mayor yipped and jumped as more people bent to the ground. They raised their arms. The town moved in and then
Cora couldn’t see them anymore.