Redfield Farm: A Novel of the Underground Railroad (19 page)

She stopped eating, her eyes bright. “Them horses cryin’ and the wagon broke. We was all knocked heck west and crooked. False bottom fall out and me and the other two scatter in the mud.” Her face darkened. “Field hands. They’s not hurt too bad, and they think Mr. Jesse’s dead, on account of the wagon on top of him and he head bleedin’. So they lit out. Figured stayin’ bring nothin’ but trouble. I’m not sure he dead, so I try to get the horses free so they can help me get him out.”

I listened breathlessly as Lettie recounted the story, her eyes on our faces.

“It bad, Miss Ann. I got the horses on they feet—I learned about horses from my Josiah—but they so spooked, they no help, so I tie them to a tree and pull everything out of the wagon. Make it light so’s I can move it. No such luck. Jesse, he lie there moanin’ and it just keep rainin’.”

She passed her empty bowl to me. “After while the horses settle down, and I rope them to the wagon an’ get them to commence pullin’. I push from the bottom side, and finally the wagon upright, on a steep slant. Then I try to help Mr. Jesse, but he bad hurt.” Her normally animated face was slack, expressionless.

“I want to run. Figure it’s my only chance, but then I think if I was hurt, he’d do what he could to help me. I knowed his folk would come for him. Just had to wait. Waited all day in the rain. Nobody on the road. No sign of them two niggers. They lit out without even sayin’ goodbye.” Her contempt for the others was clear.

“We was down over the bank, so a body could pass without seein’ us. I pull Mr. Jesse under the wagon and hunker down and wait and pray.”

“Oh, Lettie! If you’d run away, too, Jesse might have died,” I cried.

“I couldn’t run off and leave him after he almost died tryin’ to save me.”

Nate took up the story. “It was over past Pavia, halfway up the mountain we found them. By the time we got there, they’d been lying out for the better part of a day. Lettie heard us coming and climbed up on the road to hail us.”

“I wa so scared and cold and hungry by then, I didn’t care if it was slave catchers or who it was.”

“Ben and I used the team and our horses to pull the wagon back up on the road. It was pretty broken up, but we figured to try and get it home. We hid Lettie again and loaded Jesse on top of the false bottom. Took us a couple of hours to get back.”

Looking at my baby brother’s face, wan in the lamplight, I thought how young he was. Jesse’d been in this thing even younger than Nate, but somehow Nate seemed too young for it tonight.

I sent him off to bed and Lettie to sleep in my room. I passed the rest of the night tending my brother. My heart ached to look at him, so broken and bruised, in so much pain.

I was in deep discomfort having Lettie back. Shame on me. Were it not for her, Jessie might have died. But now, with Jessie laid up, how was I going to move her on? Panic rose at the thought of having her around for who knew how long. Despite her kindness, courage and decency, I just wanted her gone.

A
bby rose with the sun the next morning and wandered into the kitchen to a strange sight:
Jesse curled up on his side on Amos’s bed; Amos asleep in a chair, lost in open-mouthed snoring; and me on a bench at the table, asleep on my arms.

The doctor came late in the morning, but he couldn’t do much to ease Jesse’s pain. He thought there were broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a shoulder that he described as “smashed.” A concussion compounded Jesse’s discomfort with a raging headache. There was little to do beyond wrapping his rib cage, setting the shoulder and collar bone as best could be done, and putting his left arm in a sling to hold both in place.

Tearing long strips of cloth from an old sheet, the doctor trussed up the shoulder and collarbone amid groans of pain from Jesse. He showed me how to wrap the strips, watching me as I worked.

“I want to be clear about his chances,” the doctor said, looking squarely at me. “If one of the ribs punctured a lung, he could die. His shoulder? That’s a matter of chance. He could mend nicely, or he could have a useless left arm.”

“Yes, well, it’s in God’s hands now,” I replied.

The wagon was needed almost daily around the farm, so that afternoon Amos and Nathaniel repaired it. The horses, though scraped and bruised, had suffered no broken bones, so they would recover. The day gradually cleared, and by evening, the summer storm was only a memory.

I worried over Jesse. I wondered how we would carry on the work without him. But I had more immediate concerns. I was pondering the future—my own and my child’s.

My head buzzed with thoughts about moving Lettie on; the responsibility was now mine alone. I shuddered at the thought. How could I do it? And yet I must. Slowly, a plan took shape in my mind. I mulled it over for a long time, not sure I could make it work. And yet I must.

First I wrote to Josiah and told him Lettie was with us and about the accident and Jesse’s condition. I ended the letter with a revelation I never expected to make. I told him about Sam. My heart poured out on the paper—how strong, healthy, and beautiful Sam was and how he brought so much joy to us.

I didn’t tell him about being disowned by the Society of Friends, or about the likes of Pru Hartley or Jacob Schilling, or about the strange looks in peoples’ eyes when they saw me with a Negro child. He would already know about that. I ended by promising to get Lettie to him as soon as I could. The letter was long, the envelope fat. Nathaniel remarked on it when I gave it to him to post. No one but I knew that Lettie was Josiah’s wife, and that was just as well, for now.

The next step needed Betsy’s help, so on Second Day I rode off to New Paris on Nathaniel’s horse, leaving Sam with Lettie and Abby. I told them my errand was to tell Betsy about Jesse’s ill fortune, but that was only part of it.

“Sister, I need your help,” I told Betsy, after relating the story of Jesse’s wreck. “I need some fancy clothes.”

Betsy’s eyebrows went up. “Fancy clothes? Why, Ann?”

“I just need them, Betsy. I’ll explain later, but . . . please, can you get me some? Something very unQuaker-like. Just one outfit. For me.”

“I think I can,” Betsy replied. Will’s Aunt Edith had married out of the Society and lived in Bedford with her lawyer husband and two grown daughters. The girls were extremely fashionable, giving Betsy hope that she could get an outfit for me. “It’ll take a few days, but I think I can do it.” Betsy knew enough about the Railroad to cooperate without asking for an explanation.

I returned home, satisfied that part two of my plan was in motion. Now I wrote to Rachel for railroad schedules and fares between Altoona and Pittsburgh. My next concern was money. I had but little, so I needed help. No one else in the family was very well off, except Uncle Sammy Grainger. Jesse always went to him with Railroad problems because Uncle Sammy had resources and was sympathetic to the cause. I waited for a chance to go see him.

The following First Day, Amos, Nathaniel, and Abby left for Meeting, Abby protesting, torn between boredom with Meeting and a need to socialize. I urged her out the door, looking forward to some time with Jesse.

“You’re looking better today,” I told him as he struggled to sit up. He winced in pain but moved more easily than before.

“I think I could use a good wash,” he replied, easing his way out of bed. It was the first time he’d tried to get up.

I pumped water and set the kettle over the fire. Watching me, Jesse reflected, “We ought to get an iron stove in here, Ann. It would make your work a lot easier.”

I nodded, helping him to the table, where I’d set out a bowl of oatmeal with honey. While he ate, I went upstairs for some clean clothes. I filled a basin with hot water and washed his hair. I felt the bump on the side of his head where the concussion was.

“Does that hurt?”

“No. Just a little numb when you touch it.”

Next I stropped his razor and set out his mug and soap to shave him. I did all right for my first attempt at shaving. Only nicked him once. When that was done, I poured a basin of fresh, hot water and helped him wash. I left him for a few minutes while I brought out clean sheets and changed his bed. Then I helped him put on his pants, shirt, and stockings. That was about all he could handle for one day, so he lay back down. He grinned. “Pretty much an invalid now, huh?”

“You’ll mend,” I told him, whether I believed it or not.

It was a warm, sunny day, so Lettie took Sam into the parlor and opened all the windows to air out the room. I did the same in the kitchen, but there the windows were small. Still, the sunshine and fresh air were welcome.

“We’ll take a coach north to Erie. That way she’ll be safe all the way to the lake. If I get her that far, and buy her a ferry ticket, she could be in Canada that night.”

“I suppose so, but why would you go to all that trouble when you could just send her on to the next station and be done with it?”

“Because she saved your life, Jesse. You could have died out there on the mountain. And . . .” I hesitated but knew I must silence his objections. “because she’s Josiah’s wife.”

Jesse lowered his head, thinking. He liked Josiah and Lettie, too, and he understood my need to make something up to her. “All right, if you can arrange it, I’ll support you. But how will you get enough money?”

“I’m working on that.”

“I have a little cash, but not that much,” he offered. I wish I could help more. Wish I could go with you, but this shoulder’s going to keep me down for quite a while.”

I patted his good shoulder. “You’ve already done enough. More than enough. I should be able to take care of this on my own.”

A few days later, I rode Nate’s horse to Fishertown to see Uncle Sammy Grainger. He greeted me at the door, energetic in spite of his eighty years. “Ann! It’s been so long since we’ve seen you!”

“I should have come sooner, Uncle.”

Uncle Sammy was a loving soul. Married to Amos’s oldest sister, he’d spent his life in good-humored service to others. He and Aunt Alice were childless, and so took a great interest in the lives of their nieces and nephews. Aunt Alice was the first to visit me after Sam’s birth when others were hesitant to call on a sinner.

Now Uncle Sammy asked after my siblings and I dutifully reported on each, with extra details about Jesse’s troubles. Uncle Sammy didn’t go to Meeting much anymore, so he hadn’t heard about Jesse. He listened intently to my account of the accident and Lettie’s heroic behavior. While we drank a cup of tea, I revealed the reason for my visit.

My plan moved forward. The railroad fares and schedule arrived from Rachel early the next week, and Will McKitrick rode up with a bundle on his saddle on Sixth Day. Now it was left to ask a favor of Ben. That afternoon I took the path through the orchard to his house. As I crossed the yard, I saw him in the doorway of the barn and waved.

“Ben, I need your help. I’m moving Lettie on soon, and I need a way to get us to Bedford. We’ll take a coach from there to Altoona. I won’t be coming back right away, so I’d like to borrow your buggy and a team to take us to Bedford, but I can’t return it.”

“I could take you,” Ben offered.

“No, Ben. You have enough to do. I was hoping to borrow the buggy and leave it at the livery. Then maybe Nate or Elias could bring it home when they go to town.”

Ben looked puzzled. “Sure. You can do that,” he said.

Walking back through the orchard, I went over the plan again in my mind. In Altoona, we could stay the night with Rachel, in spite of possible hostility from Jacob Schilling. This was more important than his antics. I thought it through, one step at a time. It should work. A southern lady traveling with her maid.

I missed Meeting again the next First Day so I could pack a small trunk, try on my “Southern lady” finery and outfit Lettie in one of my old dresses. I slept little that night, wrestling with nightmares when I did. Dawn finally came, and I went to awaken Lettie. Then I returned to my room, dressed in the dark so as not to waken Abby, and quietly picked up the sleeping baby and carried him downstairs.

Placing the child in Lettie’s arms, I put a cautionary finger to my lips and nodded toward the door. Lettie carried Sam to the barn, where I hitched up Ben’s team to the buggy. Inside the barn, Lettie let out a cry.