Railroad of Courage Read online

  “Oh, I didn’t hear anything about that,” Ezekiel replied. “Me, I’m just taking this wagon to my master’s son, up near the border. Master, he told me to drive this feed up there tonight. I begged him, I said, ‘Master, I’ll do it first thing in the morning’ but he said, ‘No, you’ll do it now.’ I don’t like driving at night because there are ghosts and spirits out here in the woods. Master doesn’t care if they get me or not.”

  The man scoffed. “We’re looking for runaways, not ghosts. Some say those runaways were eaten by gators; others say they all burned in a fire on Grower Timothy’s plantation. But some say they’re alive and on the run. There’s a reward for those runaways—big money for a man they call Moses.” Frightened though I was, I wanted to laugh when I heard him call Moses a man.

  Another man said gruffly, “I need to see what you’ve got in that wagon.”

  Ezekiel said, “Go ahead. You can look for runaways but you won’t find any in this wagon. I don’t much care for runaways, I don’t. They make trouble for all us slaves.”

  The men climbed onto the wagon and poked pitchforks into the feed bags that lay on top of the planks. I prayed that the wood would hold. A splinter cut my leg and I bit my lip so I wouldn’t cry out. I squirmed closer to the side of the wagon.

  The men jumped down and one of them said, “Okay, no runaways here. Get on your way.”

  Ezekiel said, “If you fellows are travelling north, I’d be grateful for your company on this dark, lonely road.”

  “We’re not out here to keep you company, boy. We’ve got to catch those runaways.”

  Ezekiel said, “I best be going then. Master will be some upset if I don’t get that feed delivered by the time the sun rises.”

  “Giddy-up,” he said, and the horses started trotting down the road. We were travelling again and we travelled all night long, hour after hour, until we reached North Carolina.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Zigzag Route

  I awoke in bright daylight and all was quiet. I didn’t see Ezekiel or the wagon. Had he abandoned us? I looked at Moses and whispered, “Where is Ezekiel? Why did he leave us here?”

  Moses said, “He went back to the plantation. He had to be back before morning so Grower Timothy wouldn’t know he’d been gone.”

  Moses pointed to a farmhouse across the road from us. Through the thick trees that lined the road, I saw a white woman hanging laundry on a clothesline. She wore a plain black bonnet and a long black dress. She unpegged a quilt, a blue quilt with bright yellow stars in the pattern of the Big Dipper. She shook the quilt, folded it and put it in her laundry basket. Then she hung up a quilt with blocks of bright colour in a zigzag pattern. After she looked up and down the road, she went about her chores, feeding the chickens and sweeping the wide porch that lined the front of her house.

  Moses pointed to the clothesline. “Did you see that blue quilt, child, the one with the Big Dipper? That quilt says it’s safe to go to the house. But the one Missus Pickering just hung up, the one on the line now, it’s called the Drunkard’s Path and it means danger. We need to wait and watch what happens next. The patrollers are likely to come this way.”

  Moses looked at me. “Missus Pickering is a Quaker. You know who Quakers are, child?”

  I remembered something Miss Clarissa told me last year. She had met a woman in Henderson’s Dry Goods Store, a woman dressed all in black just like Missus Pickering. When the woman spoke to the clerk, she talked as though she were reading words in the Bible. Miss Clarissa’s father started scolding the cook Ada, and the woman told him to stop. “One day,” she said, “all slaves will be free.” Grower Brown told his daughter that the Quaker woman didn’t belong in the South.

  I answered Moses, “I know that Quakers think slaves should be free.”

  Moses smiled. “That’s right. Another name for Quakers is Friends and, for sure, they’re friends to runaways. Without freed blacks, Friends, Unitarians and the abolitionists of other faiths, there would be no Underground Railroad. And without the Railroad, we could not find our way to freedom. It’s as plain and simple as that.”

  My ma said, “Moses, that woman is white. How can we trust her?”

  Moses looked her straight in the eye. “Yes, Deborah, she’s as white as that bleached sheet hanging on the clothesline. But we can trust her; we have to trust her.”

  My ma looked down. “I’ve never trusted a white woman in my life. Miss Clarissa is a friend to Rebecca but she is a child. I’ve never had reason to trust any grown-up white person and I’m not sure I can.”

  There was a hush. Moses reached out and took my ma’s hand in her own sinewy one. “Deborah, I understand. I certainly do understand, because there was a time when I felt that way, too. But you have to have faith in the Underground Railroad.”

  In the heat of the day, flies swarmed around us, annoying us with their buzzing and their biting. Suddenly, Moses raised her finger to her lips and pushed us down, deep into the underbrush. Two patrollers on horseback rode up to Missus Pickering.

  “Ma’am, have you seen any runaways?” one of the men asked. “They’re armed and dangerous.”

  Missus Pickering looked at the man and said in a kindly voice, “Can I offer thee a drink of lemonade? Thee must be thirsty.”

  Just like the woman Miss Clarissa had met, she sounded like she was reading from the Holy Book, the Bible. I wondered if all Quakers talked that way.

  The men took off their hats and said they would be grateful for a drink, so Missus Pickering went into the house. When she returned, and handed the men their lemonade, the taller one said, “Ma’am, we thank you for the drink but we are going to search your house, your cellar and your barn.” The men searched the yard, too, but did not come near the thicket where we were hidden.

  The men shook their heads. “We didn’t find any runaways this time, but we’re going to keep an eye on you and all the other Quakers between here and the Mason–Dixon Line. We know you Friends like to help runaways, but helping them is against the law. You remember that.”

  Then he sternly warned her. “If we find you or your husband harbouring runaways, there’ll be trouble. We’ll burn down your barns.”

  Missus Pickering smiled and said calmly, “Would thee like more lemonade?”

  The men shook their heads no, and turned their horses toward the road. As they rode away, we heard the woman say, “May the Lord bless thee and keep thee. And may He forgive thee for thy sins.”

  A few minutes later a man drove a horse and wagon into the yard. He was dressed in a plain, dusty black suit. He came straight toward the thicket where we were hiding, and said, “My brethren and sisters, please come into my home.” He bowed his head and said, “As it says in the Gospel of Matthew, ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ You are most welcome here.”

  His wife smiled at us. “As my husband said, thee are most welcome in our home. My name is Mary and my husband’s name is Samuel, Samuel Pickering.”

  Mister Pickering said, “There is a hidden room at the top of the stairs. You will be safe there.”

  He led us inside and up steep stairs to a landing with a large pine wardrobe. Missus Pickering pushed the clothes aside and opened a small door in the back of the wardrobe. She said, “Thee must stay in the hidden room, for the patrollers may be back at any time.”

  Mister Pickering said, “Yes, please wait here. I will be off now to the next house on the Underground Railroad. We will plan a way to carry you towards freedom. The patrollers are the biggest danger you face but we must also be mindful of the coming winter.”

  Uncle Josiah waited for Mister Pickering to leave before shaking his head. “I never thought I’d see a day where white folks would invite us into their home to protect us from patrollers.”

  My pa nodded. “And I never thought I’d see a day where I’d be running away from slavery. I am thankful, Rebecca, that you set us on the road to f
reedom.”

  The hidden room was dark and narrow, the air was hot and still, but we were grateful to be safe. Missus Pickering went downstairs to fetch food and water for us. I sank to the floor, too weary to stand.

  Moses said, “Mister Pickering will find a safe way to move us to the next stop. The Underground Railroad can have a lot of twists and turns, but trusted conductors like Mister Pickering will help us find our way north.”

  My ma asked, “Where will we go from here? What’s north of here?”

  Uncle Josiah sighed. “Seems like we can’t go north, because that’s where the patrollers are looking for us.”

  Moses grunted. “Yes, we may have to go east, west or even south just now. But at the end of the day, we will go north. Usually I go straight north and cross the Mason–Dixon Line at the border of Delaware. Then I go through Philadelphia and New York City—but not this time. Too many patrollers will be watching that route.”

  I asked, “What is the Mason–Dixon Line?”

  Moses said, “North of that line, white folks cannot own, buy or sell slaves, but south of that line they can. The line is part of the Compromise of 1850 when the federal government tried to make peace between those in the South who wanted slavery and those in the North who didn’t.”

  Missus Pickering brought us more water. The heat in the hidden room was rising.

  Moses said, “Soon we’ll be wishing we had some of this heat to keep us warm. Rebecca, do you know what winter’s like in the North?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well,” said Moses, “let me tell you about winter. The cold is so cold it will make your teeth chatter. There’s snow that comes down like cotton falling out of the sky and covers everything—the houses and the roads, the trees and the fields. The streams and rivers, they turn to ice. The ice is as hard as rock and you can walk straight across a river. Can you imagine that?”

  Moses continued, “Yes, winter in the North is some cold, but North is where freedom lies. There are lots of ways to go north but all of them are cold at this time of year.”

  Moses knew we were all worried that the patrollers might come back so she kept talking. “Oh, yes, there are as many ways to go north as there are colours in the rainbow. One slave, he put himself in a box three feet long and two feet wide and mailed himself up North. Now he goes by the name of Henry Box Brown. When they took Henry out of that box, two big men had to pull him straight again.”

  Moses laughed and we laughed with her. Our fear didn’t weigh so heavy on our minds just then.

  “Another way to go north is to take a ship out of Charleston, South Carolina, or Norfolk, Virginia. William and Ellen Craft, they escaped from a plantation in Georgia and got on a ship.”

  On the plantation I had heard many people’s stories about crossing the sea from Africa. Slaves were forced onto ships and chained together, the chains wrapped around posts in the holds, deep down in the ships. “How did William and Ellen travel to freedom on a ship?” I wanted to know.

  Moses chuckled, “Ellen, her people were from Africa but she was as white as Grower Brown himself.”

  I had seen slaves who were white, brown, black and every colour in between. I knew that the growers fancied the fair-skinned women and had children with them, but the children of those women, they were slaves just like the rest of us. It didn’t matter what the colour of their skin was, and it didn’t matter who fathered them. “I know about slaves with white skin,” I said. “But how did Ellen and William stay out of chains on that ship?”

  Moses said, “Oh, those slaves, they outwitted their masters. For a long time, they thought and thought about how to escape. Then one night the Lord spoke to Ellen and told her to dress up like a white grower. She did just that and William pretended to be her slave. Ellen, she stayed in a stateroom while William, he stayed with the slaves in the hold.”

  I asked Moses, “What’s a stateroom?”

  “Child, it’s a fancy room on a ship, with a soft bed to sleep on and warm blankets and a pretty little round window that looks out on the water.”

  I tried to picture it—a slave in a stateroom. Moses said, “Ellen and William nearly got caught because Ellen had to sign papers when she boarded the ship, and she didn’t know how to read or write. A white man took pity on her and did the writing for Ellen, never imagining he was helping a runaway. Eight days later, they landed in Boston. Unfortunately, the federal marshals were there looking for them, so Ellen and William went on across the ocean to England. England is a place like Canada where slavery is forbidden by law.”

  Moses suddenly went quiet and rolled onto the floor where she lay still, as if dead. My ma called her name but Moses didn’t wake up. My ma knelt over her and felt for her breath. “She’s breathing but she’s breathing rough.”

  Moses slept for such a long time that we were scared. We didn’t know whether we should call Missus Pickering or not. We prayed that Moses would wake up. Then, as quickly as she had fallen asleep, she awoke, blinking her eyes. It seemed she had no idea where she was or how long she had slept.

  I felt bad because I’d been worried about Moses but, even more, I’d been worried about my family and myself. Without Moses, how could we follow the Underground Railroad? Only Moses knew the conductors; only Moses knew the routes and how to escape the dangers along the way.

  Moses sat up. “I’m sorry I scared all of you. Sometimes I have these sleeping spells. When I was a young girl on a plantation in Maryland, people called me by a different name—Minty. I was a field slave and, one day when I was husking corn, an overseer thought the slave working beside me was too slow and he started whipping him. The slave made a run for it, but the overseer ran after him and cornered him in a shed. Without even thinking, I followed them.

  “The overseer, he shouted, ‘Minty, help me catch that slave!’ But there was no way I was going to help him. Instead, when the slave ran out of the shed, I blocked the doorway. That white overseer, he was so mad, he picked up a brick and threw it at the man, but it hit me instead—right on the head. I didn’t wake up for days. Ever since then, from time to time, I have these sleeping spells. But don’t you worry, I always wake up.”

  We heard the back of the wardrobe open, and Missus Pickering bent low and brought us porridge and fresh water. She looked at us with worry in her eyes. “When Samuel returns, I pray thee will be able to move to the next station. My husband should be back soon.”

  We stayed in the dark, crowded room and waited. Not long after Missus Pickering went back downstairs, we heard men’s voices. The patrollers were back. Missus Pickering welcomed them into her home but said, “Thee are looking in the wrong place, for thee will not find slaves here.”

  “Ma’am, I hope you’re telling the truth. Those runaways are dangerous.”

  “Thee will never find slaves in a house blessed by God,” Missus Pickering answered.

  The man asked abruptly, “Where is your husband?”

  Missus Pickering said that Mister Pickering had gone to town to find a buyer for their corn.

  The patrollers rode off, leaving us feeling even more worried than before. What had happened to Mister Pickering? We needed to keep moving north. Missus Pickering waited some time before she came up the stairs and sat on the floor beside us. She knew we were very frightened.

  Moses said, “Missus Pickering, thank you for lying to the patrollers, even though you are a religious woman.”

  Missus Pickering smiled. “I did not lie. There are no slaves in a house blessed by God, because in God’s eyes, there are no slaves.”

  Soon after, Missus Pickering hurried downstairs when we heard a rider approaching the house. We were worried that the patrollers were back. This time, they might find the hidden room behind the wardrobe. We were relieved to hear Mister Pickering greet his wife. “Mary, I have returned. I trust all is well here?”

  A few minutes later, both the Pickerings came up the stairs, bringing us bread and a pot of beans. Hungry as we were, we did not ea
t until Mister Pickering told us his plan for the next step on our journey.

  Mister Pickering said, “Brethren and sisters, I am concerned for you. You have enraged the growers. In their minds, you have made trouble, like a stick poked into a beehive. The roads north are not safe to travel.”

  Moses looked at Mister Pickering. “If we are in the middle of a beehive, we can’t stay here much longer. We don’t want harm to come to you kind folks. I’ve seen too many barns burned because growers hate you Quakers. They hate all abolitionists.”

  Mister Pickering shook his head. “I have talked with other Quakers and we agree that you will be hunted without mercy between here and Delaware. But there will be fewer patrollers if you go west to Memphis, Tennessee. Tennessee is a slave state but Quakers there will help you board a steamboat that will carry you up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri. We have found a quadroon, a fair-skinned slave, who wishes to join you on the Underground Railroad. Her name is Delilah. She will pretend to be your mistress on the steamboat.”

  Moses said, “It is a daring plan, but remember the story of Ellen and William Craft? Ellen was able to pass as a white grower, and she and William escaped.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Travelling as the Dead

  A few nights later, Mister Pickering came up to the hidden room and said, “Brethren and sisters, now is the time for you to flee. You will travel in a most unusual way.”

  He led us outside where two black horses were hitched to a big black wagon, a hearse. Last spring, when Grower Brown’s father died, a hearse like this one had carried the old man’s body to the graveyard. Now, a stranger stood beside the wagon. He was dressed in a black suit, like Mister Pickering, and I thought he must be another Quaker. Mister Pickering said, “This is my friend, Daniel, and he has brought this hearse to carry you to the steamboat. There are five coffins with holes cut in the side to help you to breathe. I will drive you myself, and, with the help of God, we will reach Memphis in a week.”