Redfield Farm: A Novel of the Underground Railroad (27 page)

She sidled up to Cooper, made a point of slipping her arm through his. “No, thanks. My brother’ll be takin’ care of us for the present.”

I looked to Cooper. “So you’ll be staying around for a while?”

“Long enough to make me some money roundin’ up niggers,” he said pointedly. “Been livin’ down to Maryland. Got a lot of friends getting’ rich catchin’ runaways. Figure this’d be good territory to start up on my own.” He looked me straight in the eye.

I thought of Josiah and Sam, safe in Canada, thank God. Cooper Hartley meant to do us harm, no doubt of it.

“So, you’ll be looking out for Pru and her boys? That’s nice. They need a man around.”

“Got one now,” he said, puffing out his chest. “Man enough to handle what comes.” He spat a stream of tobacco juice, leaving a little trickle at the corner of his mouth, and turned his attention to Abby again. “Ain’t you Robert Hill’s girl?”

Abby’s nod was barely an acknowledgment.

“Your old man was a piece of work, now wasn’t he?”

Abby looked down at her lap. She rarely mentioned her father, and when she did, it was only brief, in passing. Now she picked up a handful of her skirt and twisted it with white knuckles.

“Owed me some money, that one. Died afore he paid me my debt. I might be collectin’ it yet, though,” he said, leering at Abby.

I felt a need to move on before my temper got the better of me. It was a lifelong tenet of survival not to rile the Hartleys. Though I hated being hostage to their evil ways, I knew better than to poke a snake.

“Well, nice to see you, Pru. You take care, now, and if you change your mind about those tomatoes, let me know.”

“Not likely.”

I flipped the reins over the horse’s rump and drove away, not too fast, but not too slow. At home that evening I told Jesse about the encounter, but, true to his nature, he was unconcerned.

A man and wife had been passed along from Everett, and Jesse was careful not to keep people around for too long with the Hartleys watching our every move.

I gathered some quilts. These late August nights could be cold. I picked up my bonnet and shawl and a lantern. Abby came down from upstairs. She yawned. “Where are you goin’ so late?”

“There’s always a need for more folk. Make it look like you’ve got a reason to be out. Besides, more heads make the thinking go better.”

Jesse was already in the barn, hitching up the wagon, and I didn’t feel like arguing, so I hurried out the door with Abby behind me. Jesse nodded to us as he swung up on the wagon seat. I let the wagon out and pulled myself up beside him. Abby was settled among the quilts in the back, barely visible to either of us.

The night was dark, but the moon came up late, brightening the road ahead. Still the forest, close on both sides of the wagon track, was hardly penetrated by the light. Shadows closed in, wrapping themselves around us.

Suddenly, from the woods on the left, we heard a horse snort. Then the forest was alive with movement. Five riders stepped out on the road in front of us. Jesse and I hadn’t agreed on a ‘story’— careless of us. Now we searched our minds frantically for any reason to be out on the road this late at night.

I crawled over the wagon seat to Abby’s side, ministering to the ‘sick’ girl. Abby moaned. “Pa? How far is it yet to the doctor’s? I’m so sick.”

The horsemen backed up a few steps. “What’s the matter with her?” one of them asked.

“Don’t know,” Jesse replied. “Some sort of fever. Came on all of a sudden.”

I talked quietly to Abby. Gentle, comforting words. “It’s all right, dear. Don’t you worry. We’ll get you there. You’re going to be all right.”

The five riders turned, passed back into the trees and were gone. Jesse clucked to the team. In back with Abby, I kept up a stream of encouraging words, mostly for those below.

We continued down the road, surrounded by night sounds and the smell of damp leaf mold. The sky was beginning to lighten when we arrived at Mary’s farm near Osterburg. Jesse drove around behind the barn, and we unloaded our charges into the corn crib and covered them with corn cobs. We worked silently and quickly, grateful that Noah kept his dog inside at night. When the fugitives were safely stowed away, Jesse unhitched the horses and led them around to the lower barn. Abby and I entered the hay loft and lay down to await the dawn.

When he returned Jesse smiled at us in the gray dimness. “Abby, you sure can think on your feet,” he said. “I always want you on my side, girl!”

O
ne day about a month later, Abby came back from Ben’s, all breathless with news.
“Elias’s been called to Chambers-burg. Melissa’s down with pneumonia and it don’t look good.”

Elias left the next morning, astride one of his best riding horses. He waved—almost gaily, I thought—as he rode by on his way to the Fishertown road.

“That Elias,” I grumbled to Jesse at breakfast. “He’s hardly visited his wife these two years now. Even Lucy doesn’t seem to hold any attraction for him. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself!”

But Jesse saw him only as inept. “He’s not a bad sort. A lot of the time he doesn’t know what to do, so he doesn’t do anything.”

I was unconvinced. I saw Elias as selfish, but Rebecca also spoke of her brother in a charitable tone.

“Elias doesn’t mean to be hurtful. He’s immature at worst. Can’t find room in his head for others’ needs. He means well, but he doesn’t see beyond his nose. He’s been that way since he was a boy, which some say wasn’t so long ago.”

“I wonder that I didn’t see it when I thought to marry him,” I mused. It was sure I didn’t care for Elias anymore, leftover resentment from his marriage to Melissa tainting my view, but I wished him neither well nor ill. He was as much a part of the landscape as any other Friend. No more. No less.

Melissa died in September. It was not unexpected, but still very sad. I remembered the beautiful young girl, so much in love with Elias, who had unknowingly destroyed my world. Despite wanting to dislike her, I’d found her a kind and pleasant soul. The tragedy of her marriage and short life made me sad.

A few days later Abby brought more news from Ben’s. “Elias is still down there. She lingered a long time, poor thing. I guess he’ll be home in a week or so. Ben’s sorely overworked without him.”

“What about Lucy?” I wondered. “I suppose he’ll leave her with Melissa’s parents.”

“He will, if I know Elias,” Abby replied.

Apparently, Abby didn’t know Elias, for a week later he arrived on horseback with his little daughter bundled in front of him. Abby, Rebecca, and I looked at one another, in disbelief.

“What is he thinking?” I asked. “How’s he going to take care of her when he couldn’t even take care of Melissa when she needed him? Who does he think is going to help him?”

Elias’ first move was to hire one of the Conley girls to care for Lucy during the day. The rest he did himself, asking Rebecca or me for advice but doing for his child with a new found sense of responsibility. Elias and Lucy became a familiar pair at social gatherings, Meetings, or family affairs. She wore store bought clothes and shoes. She learned to ride a horse before Christmas. She followed her father to the stables and listened to horse talk before she could reach up to feed a horse an apple. A beautiful child, she favored her mother but was fully able to speak for herself, stronger than Melissa had ever been, and the center of her father’s world.

I watched Elias’s struggles in raising Lucy with detached interest and not a little amusement. One day, he asked me to teach him how to braid the little girl’s hair. Long and blond, it had flown free since babyhood, but now Elias worried (like an old hen, I said to myself) that it would get caught in something and cause her injury. Elias and I had a good laugh as his clumsy hands fumbled to braid hair as soft as silk and just as slippery.

“Aunt Ann does it better than you, Papa,” Lucy told Elias. “Her braids are tighter. Yours feel like they’re falling out.”

Elias chuckled at the criticism. “I do pretty well for a mere man, don’t you think?” he asked with a wink.

Abby watched with interest as Elias, a little at a time, wormed his way back into my life. “He’s just making excuses to visit you,” she said. “Wants another wife, most likely.”

I pushed that idea to the back of my mind and tried to be helpful when Elias came around—for Lucy’s sake, I told myself.

Consciously or not, I protected myself against a repeat of my earlier humiliation.

One evening the following summer, Elias brought Lucy over for a visit, seated, as always, in front of him in the saddle. Elias handed her down to me, dismounted and tethered his horse. Abby and I had canned peaches and saved several big, juicy ones for eating. I sliced one into a bowl for Lucy and sat down with Elias to watch her enjoy the treat.

“I’ve been thinking about my house,” Elias began. “Thought I’d build on, maybe double the size, add a porch on back, and put in some new windows.”

“I want it done by harvest. So we can enjoy the winter in it. I want it to be a fine home for Lucy. A cook stove in the kitchen and a heating stove in the parlor. I’m even thinking about running water in the kitchen instead of a hand pump. These new pumps they have can do that.”

I rose and walked away, stepped off the porch and out into the yard. I couldn’t say I hadn’t thought about it. It had been in the back of my mind since Melissa died, but I wasn’t ready for the actuality of it. My feelings about Elias had been here, there, and everywhere since the January day he’d driven up with Melissa at his side. I’d loved him, hated him, resented him, pitied him, disdained him, enjoyed him, laughed at him, even respected him. Now I looked among all those feelings for something solid, unchanging—something to make me want to spend the rest of my life with him.

Elias sat quietly on the porch with Lucy, giving me time to think. I couldn’t get my mind around the idea of actually being his wife. Too much water under the bridge. I walked all the way to the edge of Ben’s orchard and looked over at my brother’s house, bursting at the seams with a big family growing bigger. Ben and Rebecca’s seventh child was due before Christmas.

It was all I’d ever wanted—a husband, a home, a family. Now, here it was, mine for the taking. Lord knew, I had no other prospects. What was stopping me? I didn’t know. I couldn’t name it. But there it was in front of me like a huge boulder in the road. I couldn’t marry Elias because I didn’t love him. All old hurts aside, I knew him too well to ever love him like that. Like what? Like I loved Josiah. I turned and walked back to the porch to give Elias my answer.

Apparently Elias was bent on having him a wife, for two weeks after I rejected his offer he proposed to Deborah Hill, Abby’s 18-year-old sister. Rebecca was more than a little put out with him for taking away her hired girl, but Elias reminded her that someone was bound to do it some day. It was simply a matter of time.