Martha and the Slave Catchers Read online

  A SEVEN STORIES PRESS

  & TRIANGLE SQUARE

  FIRST EDITION

  Copyright © 2017 by Harriet Hyman Alonso

  Artwork by Elizabeth Zunon

  All rights reserved.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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  ISBN: 978-1-60980-801-3

  For Joe

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  Letter to the Reader

  CHAPTER 1

  MARTHA BARTLETT jolted awake, her eyes wide open, her heart pounding so hard it hurt. She looked around the dimly lit room from the quilt cocoon that encircled her body on the plush, but simple, sofa. Someone had placed a soft pillow under her head, but she had no idea who. The room itself was unfamiliar. Its fireplace, brick walls, and rocking chair reminded her of home, but it was not her home. She knew that much at least, but not much more.

  It was an effort to push the quilt away, but she longed to sit up. As she did, pain ripped through her arms, legs, and back. Gingerly, she touched her left eye, which throbbed in agony. Then she felt the bandage wrapped around her aching head. What had happened to her?

  For several long minutes, she willed her brain to work. Think. Think harder. Try to remember. She closed her eyes tightly and opened them again, believing that perhaps the movement would spark a memory. In between two long blinks, she spotted a light blue square envelope with “Martha” printed in bold letters on the small table next to her. She knew that was her name, but still, she just stared at it. For some reason she did not understand, the letter’s presence frightened her. Finally, though, she reached for it.

  As her trembling hands touched the envelope’s flap, she realized just how weak she was. Her finger could hardly work its way under the wax seal to break it. Then, she almost ripped the thin, fragile paper as she took the letter out and unfolded it.

  She began reading.

  4 July 1854

  My dearest daughter,

  Martha immediately recognized the handwriting. “Papa,” she whispered, as the warmth of home reached out to her and, as if by magic, her papa’s twinkling blue eyes smiled at her.

  This letter comes to you through a trusted friend. I write it without knowing if you are safe, where exactly you are, or even being able to scribe your name or the name of the other I fret over.

  The other. The fuzz in her head cleared slightly. Jake. She remembered her younger brother, Jake. Where was he? In a panic, Martha pushed herself to her feet. The room spun around and she promptly sat down, tilting her head forward onto her lap. As her dizziness eased, she saw an image of her and Jake running away from something bad. But what? She picked up the letter again, hoping it would give her the answer she needed.

  Squinting to keep the print in focus, she read on:

  As has been so for almost your entire thirteen-plus years, we live with secrets and lies, hiding the truth from a world racked with the abomination that is slavery. The result is before us now. Separation and hardship and who knows what else. It grieves me that I cannot be with you now to return you to your normal life. In truth, I do not know when that day will come, although I hope it will be soon. Currently, it is far too dangerous for you here at home. So, I have given our friends permission to take you to a safe place.

  Rest assured, everyone here is toiling with all our might to rid the evil from this place. And we shall succeed. I am sure of it.

  Martha’s eyes welled up with tears. She had never been away from her parents before she left home just a few weeks ago. Why had she gone? She thought hard, but it was all a blank.

  Your mama is not doing well.

  Mama. Martha longed for her lovely mama, who had been ailing for several years. But from what?

  Fear, worry, secrets, and lies have all lodged themselves in her mind. Nowadays she does not move from her favorite rocking chair in the parlor. She only stares out into a world I am not a part of, mumbling in her Quaker Plain Speech about her childhood and the glories of her youth when nonviolence and goodwill encased all that she did. The morning you left, she went to your room and took your rag doll and now talks to it as if you were here. “Thee is a good girl.” “Keep thy brother safe.” “I love thee both.”

  Martha pounded on her head, then winced. What were these secrets and lies that had so hurt her mama that she had withdrawn from the world? Why couldn’t she remember? Somewhere deep inside she knew her mama needed her and that she had to get home. Who would take care of her if she wasn’t there?

  B_____ comes over once a day to help tend to her. She takes our laundry and cleans the house as well. She has been a godsend considering all the responsibilities she has at home helping her own mama with the house and the many children. She sends her love and wishes you safekeeping until she can see you again.

  Yes, of course. Becky, her best friend. She knew in her heart that she could rely upon her. Remembering Becky also brought back Caleb. Martha’s mind drifted to the sense of him holding her and kissing her softly, but she forced her eyes to focus once again on her papa’s words, words that were helping her mind to wake up. It was as if he was right there in the room with her, holding her hands, and urging her to come back to life.

  The day you left, C_____ had a most terrible confrontation with his father. He discovered that it was he who revealed our secret, all for a monetary reward. C_____ says he will never be able to forgive him. He packed his possessions, left home, and now stays in our attic room. It is a great comfort to have him at my side in the woodshop. Besides, there is so much work to do that I would flounder without him. He is very regretful, dear daughter, of his treatment of you. But I think whatever passed between you will have to be settled once you return home. I sense from him that all will work itself out once you see each other and speak deeply.

  Martha ran her finger across the coded C_____ as if by doing so she could transport Caleb to her side. She smiled as she felt in her pocket for the handkerchief with the embroidered red rose he had given her. Rubbing it against her cheek brought him closer, but she had no idea what they had quarreled about.

  Martha drew in a deep breath. The oppressive heat in the room added to her light-headedness. Sweat trickling down her neck dampened the shirt she was wearing. She ran her hand under the collar to loosen it. Why did she have on a boy’s shirt? She gazed down at her legs. And boys’ pants? She instinctively reached for one of her long plaits that she liked to twirl around her finger. Nothing. Frantically, she dropped the letter and grabbed both sides of her head, feeling for her cherished hair. Who would be so cruel as to cut it off? Could her papa tell her? She picked up the lett
er once again and anxiously looked for an answer.

  You have been a brave and honest girl, my lovely one, and I pledge that I will do everything possible to bring you both home very soon. In the meantime, you must do all in your power to protect yourself and not to fret about us. I will anxiously await news from you, and I will send news back. Our friends will see to that.

  As always, I remain your loving father.

  Her papa said nothing more and apparently knew little of what had happened to her since she had left home. For now, she was on her own and desperate to pull her memories together, regain her equilibrium, and find out where she was and what had become of her brother. She folded the letter, kissed it, replaced it in its envelope, and put it into her pocket. Then exhaustion overtook her. Involuntarily, she leaned her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. As she relaxed, scenes of her life in the small town of Liberty Falls, Connecticut, flooded her mind. And with them came memories of Jake.

  CHAPTER 2

  JAKE ENTERED Martha’s life when she was just six years old. Until then, she had been a happy-go-lucky little girl without a worry in the world. Her parents’ love and care embraced her every day, and even her natural shyness often fell by the wayside as they shared their joy of life with her. October was her special month. The hot Connecticut summer was over, and in its place came cool, crisp days, fluffy white clouds, and the spectacular red, orange, and yellow autumn leaves that fell off the trees by the end of the month. Martha loved to jump into the huge mounds her papa raked just for her. She would then throw the colorful shapes up into the air with both arms swirling around to make leaf storms.

  Best of all, Martha looked forward to the harvesting of the huge orange pumpkins that grew inch by inch all summer and early fall until even her strong papa could hardly lift them. She always laughed as he struggled and made loud groans.

  “Mahthah, Mahthah,” he would say in that New England accent he told her came from growing up in Maine. “Help me!”

  “Papa, I can’t,” she would respond, jumping up and down. “I’m too little.”

  “That may be so,” he would answer. “But not for long.”

  Then he would wrestle the huge orange orbs into the wagon, saying, “This pumpkin weighs more than our barn.”

  And Martha would always giggle and say, “Papa, you’re lying, and you told me never, ever to lie. That it is a bad thing to do.”

  “So it is, my wise daughter,” he would answer as they headed home so her mama could use the fleshy pulp for pies, breads, and puddings.

  Martha also loved picking apples off the trees in the family’s small orchard. Her papa would lift her up so she could pick the biggest, reddest piece of fruit, which she ate right away, the juice dribbling down her chin. Life could not be better.

  But October 1846 was different. Everything about it was wrong. Instead of the cool weather she looked forward to, the air was warm and muggy, and most of the leaves were still green or just turning brown when they fell like lead to the ground. In bleak fog or drizzle, she trudged the quarter mile to school until one day her papa took pity on her and started providing rides on horseback. With a sigh, Martha gazed around her world that had gone from beautiful blues, greens, reds, and yellows to browns and grays.

  The evening of October 11 was even stranger than all the others, for although it was hot and humid, her mama was frantically building a huge fire in the parlor hearth while her papa created an enormous pile of logs. In between their hurried labor, each kept casting an eye on the dirt road leading from the main thoroughfare to their small farmhouse. After an hour of squirming and pulling at her dress trying to get some air, Martha took her angry stand, the one with her hands on her hips and her right foot tapping, and complained, “Why are you making a fire? It’s so hot already!”

  “Martha Bartlett, do not pout and ask questions right now,” her mama panted as she hurried about. Martha could see perspiration streaming down her flushed red cheeks, flattening the blonde curls that usually crowded out from her lace cap onto her face. Her confusion grew stronger when her mama gave her an order that simply did not make sense. “Go bring in some more wood for me. Thee can carry the lighter pieces, canst thee? Meanwhile, I shall go fetch the boiling water. We shall need it soon.”

  “Why?” Martha queried in exasperation.

  Her mama continued to rush about. “Not now, Martha. Just do what I ask of thee.”

  “But, Mama . . .”

  “Go.”

  Martha looked at her papa for an answer, but he remained silent as he piled one log on top of another.

  “Just do as your mama asks,” he insisted. And so, shrugging her shoulders, she did.

  Huffing and puffing, Martha lugged several cut-up tree branches into the parlor. After she dropped them with an exaggerated groan near the hearth, her mama instructed her to go upstairs to her room.

  “But why, Mama? It’s only seven o’clock.”

  “Because I said so, child. And,” she added firmly, “close thy door and do not come out until morning. Look at some of thy books that bring thee so much pleasure, or play with thy doll.”

  Martha nodded but persisted in staring at the fire, the large kettle of boiling water, and her parents scurrying around and constantly glancing out the window.

  “Go!” her parents commanded in unison.

  Martha grudgingly took the lard-oil lamp her mama handed her and left the room. She had expected this evening to be like most others when, after her papa said goodnight to his last customer and closed up his woodshop, she and her parents sat peacefully in the parlor. Her papa read aloud from his abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, while her mama sewed or knitted and Martha played with her dolls or toys. Martha liked to hear her parents’ conversations. Occasionally, she asked a question about what slavery was like or about the anti-slavery activists her parents spoke about with reverence, but most times, she just listened and learned.

  Some evenings her papa put his own reading aside to entertain her with children’s stories from The Slave’s Friend. “Papa,” she might urge, “read me the one about Joggy and Lorina.” And he would read the next installment of the story of the two African children brought to New York on a slave ship and then saved by the captain and a kind lady.

  But that October night, when everything seemed upside-down and no one wanted her around, she decided to pay particularly close attention to what her parents were saying and doing, even though that meant misbehaving by spying and eavesdropping. She just had to know what was going on.

  Reluctantly, Martha climbed the steep, creaky wooden staircase up to her room on the second floor of the old house that her great-great grandparents had built. She had never met any of her ancestors, who had all died before she was born, but every time she climbed the stairs, she looked at their likenesses in the frames on the wall.

  “Hello, grandfathers Isaac and Jacob,” she would say, or “Hello, grandmothers Deborah and Leah.” Talking always eased the somewhat difficult ascent for her short, chubby legs. Oh how she wished for the day she would be taller.

  She reached her room and, by habit, paused to glance across the narrow landing at her parents’ bedroom and then at the ladder leading up to a trapdoor to the attic. Martha hated to go up there. It was so cold in the winter, so hot in the summer. Even though her mama cleaned it every day or so, it always felt dusty to her.

  Still, even at her young age, Martha understood the importance of that attic room, which on a regular basis hid a runaway slave for a day, sometimes two. The slaves appeared and disappeared very quickly on their hard journey from the South to the North, even as far as Canada. Martha’s farm was just one stop on the Underground Railroad and her parents just one pair of “stationmasters” who received their “packages” before sending them “up the line” to the next “station.”

  Although Martha’s papa and mama did not ask anything of her in this secret and dangerous work, she was perfectly aware of a refugee’s presence every t
ime the attic floorboards creaked. Sometimes, when she peeked out her door when no one was watching, she caught a glimpse of a scared-looking black person being hustled up the ladder or her mama carrying food on her way to check on them.

  Martha was proud of being raised in an abolitionist home, but she was far too young to completely understand what the Underground Railroad was or how it worked. Her heart told her, though, that if her parents participated in it, then it must be a good thing—a brave thing. And she looked forward to the day when she would be old enough to help her parents free the slaves. But she also knew how important it was to keep the Underground Railroad a secret. That was the hard part because she was by nature curious and could not help asking questions.

  That night, when Martha walked into her cozy room and quietly closed the heavy door, she was most careful to leave it open just a little crack. Since runaways usually came late at night when the house was dark and everyone in the surrounding area asleep, it made sense that some other major event was taking place. And she wanted to know what it was. She sat down on her narrow bed, the one that her papa had made just for her with his very own hands, but she was too restless to look at her books or play.

  In the end, she got up, moved her child-sized cane chair close to the small window next to her chest of drawers, and climbed onto it. By standing on her tippy toes, she could just make out her family’s fields, now dark and empty of the harvested corn, pumpkins, and vegetables. But try as she might, she could not twist her head enough to see the dirt road and front of the house where she had just heard the sound of horses’ hooves and of wagon wheels pulling up to the door.

  Martha clambered down from the chair, almost knocking it over, rushed to her door, and carefully peered out toward the downstairs entrance, which faced the steps. From the dark emerged her uncle Jonah and sixteen-year-old cousin Ned with a thin bent-over figure between them.

  “Shut thy door, Martha,” came her mama’s voice. “Now!”