Stand the Storm Read online

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the girl replied. Gabriel took no turn to speak, for he was flummoxed.

  The hiding girl sat across from Gabriel and peeped at him in furtive fascination. She had seen oyster shuckers with practiced fingers fly through that work as if they could take to wing. But Gabriel’s speed and precision at sewing was a marvel. She tried to follow his movements with her eyes and could not.

  “Sir, you stir the air up with your sewing,” she cried out.

  Gabriel looked up from his hands in alarm, looked to his mother, looked at the speaker, and then looked back at his hands. He did not speak.

  Annie answered with pride, “He was born to this work and he is the better of most at it.”

  Gabriel’s hands did falter at so much scrutiny, but the women could not detect the bobbling. He broke to have his supper dish filled by his mother. When he was done with it there was some competition between the women to take up the empty bowl. Confused by the atmosphere in his workroom, Gabriel expressed his pique by sucking his teeth and exiting. He went to the backyard for his constitutional.

  “I been put to bad use, ma’am. But I come up a good girl,” she said bluntly, for she feared Annie would think of present circumstance and judge her harshly. “Yonder the folk called me Carrie.”

  In the short time with them, she had caught a whiff of the relation between Sewing Annie and her son. The woman was deferential, solicitous, and worshipful of Gabriel, the tailor. She doted upon him and he was equally deferential to her.

  Annie clapped her cup down on the kitchen table. She rose, turned her back, and poured off a bit of the evening’s hot brew into the cup, then resumed her seat and her knitting. She took up her click-clacking work, brought her hands to rest in her lap. Then she started to click-clacking again—quietly, oh so quietly, but insistently click-clacking the needles. “Commence calling yourself Mary then. It will make a change,” Annie suggested.

  When Gabriel returned he picked up his needles and accompanied his mother. The consideration that he was unlikely to see this young woman again caused him to be melancholy. “She cannot tarry. She must not!” he repeated to himself. The melancholia came as a surprise to him. He had no truck to have feelings grow for this girl, but the feelings presented themselves.

  “What is your business to be ruminating about her?” Gabriel asked himself.

  Daniel Joshua culled an advertisement with a general description of one like Mary from a discarded broadsheet found in an alley on his circuit of town. He’d been looking to see whether the girl was advertised, and in the past few days of hauling dung about he had noticed several posts that could have described her. They were general and numerous and their generality could be dangerous. Others had been nabbed and sold south who had been many years free but resembled someone advertised. When these unfortunate were taken away, neither their word nor their free papers were accepted. Public life continued perilous for free people in this district, as well as for bondpersons. Being elusive is what Daniel had found to be the best protection.

  Daniel Joshua was fast becoming a warm seat and regular in front of the fire in the back room of the tailor shop. Gabriel thought him tough as nails—reassuringly so. He was full of blustery, important talk and was very humorous. He did more laughing than Annie and Gabriel were accustomed to hear from the mouth of a Black man. The people they were most familiar with on the Ridley place did their laughing behind their hands and did not guffaw as a rule. Once or twice Annie was anxious that Daniel Joshua’s laughter be heard in the workroom. But the sound of it was a comfortable joy to them.

  From being companionable and boisterous around a warm fire, Daniel Joshua was mysterious otherwise. This was the first thing Annie and Gabriel learned about him. He came to sit awhile in the kitchen, then left the room like a wisp of smoke. He was abrupt in taking his leave, generally saying only, “Evenin’, ma’am,” and slapping his hat. He did not reveal to them the place where he rested his head. Nor did he let their eyes follow him as he slipped down the street.

  And this is what he counseled Mary on the very evening he came to the back door of the kitchen with a notice specific to her. It was certain now that she couldn’t stay in the root cellar.

  Cold fear set in on the girl when she heard Daniel read out the description and the reward offered.

  Phillip Ruane had been successful at his gambling and returned to Rogers Spit well flush. He had flown into a rage upon learning of the sale and subsequent escape of Carrie. Stung by his wife’s actions, he endeavored to get his slave returned, though the expense was steep.

  High upon her left flank is a brand—a wreath. It is a swollen crude wound—a raised design that does mark her as belonging to Mr. Phillip Ruane of Rogers Spit, VA. There is a $500 reward for recapture, for this is a prime hand.

  Five hundred dollars was above Ruane’s idea of the value of this slave to himself. To this must be added the fees for her recapture. But he spent the money mostly to discipline his impudent wife and reduce her allowance.

  “You go hand to hand like many another has gone,” Daniel Joshua counseled Mary. He said known folk could deliver her, in company of others, from place to place until she had gained Ohio—Cincinnati, Cleveland, or as far as Sandusky. From these northern outreaches, she could go for Canada and the free air.

  “You must be stalwart, girl. It’s a per’lous journey. But it is been done.”

  The other side of Mary’s ice-cold fear of Phillip Ruane was the shame—the return to shameful feelings that the description caused. Master Ruane telling it about her—under her clothes. Her heart became so fluttery at Daniel Joshua’s reading that she would have commanded or begged him to stop except that she could not summon the words to speak out. She had feelings that were so warm for Annie and Gabriel now, and nested belowground in their cellar she’d begun to build upon pleasant thoughts. This reminder was a cruelty to her budding feelings for Gabriel.

  It was raised and ugly and, in her imagination, prone to spread out and consume all of her skin. He had put this on her. He had taken a brass stamp with a raised crest from his writing desk and heated it and laid it on her. His causing her pain had fazed him little and he was often gentle upon her. She learned quickly, though, that Phillip Ruane was gentle only to titillate himself and would quickly revert to his brutal congress.

  The group that had reached a cozy friendship wanted to resist Daniel’s advice, but dared not. Phillip Ruane’s conceit had spoiled their circle. She must now leave—to let her master have her back or scrabble toward the free north. She couldn’t continue in the warmth of Gabriel, the colored tailor, and his mother and their back room. Phillip Ruane’s advert changed that.

  Mary slid from her chair, pulled her shawl to cover her head and shoulders, then pulled it close all around to obscure her tearful cheeks. She walked out of the back door as small and slick as a mouse.

  To let the girl suffer alone did not suit Sewing Annie. Gabriel sat coolly. Butter would not melt in his mouth from the look of his face. Annie mused that she’d misunderstood him. She thought he had a hanker for the girl. But now he made no move or comment. After a few moments, she followed Mary.

  Daniel Joshua said nothing because he was full of his own plan. He knew how to get from here to the next place for a person making a run. He was putting together a route for Mary in his mind—one that he had been working out in his head for the past days. It was the kind of escape Daniel Joshua liked, for it was planned and clever. He felt a warmth and affection for this particular young woman, too. He liked a good adventure. He liked outwitting the powers. There was some of all of that in it.

  When Mary returned to their circle, pawing at her wet cheeks, Gabriel stared down into his lap and his feelings were contrary. Gabriel Coats did care for Mary in this short time and the loss of her would pinch him. If the plan unfolded, as it ought, this brand-new Mary would be walking in freedom in Canada! She would be lost to him forever. Maybe some word would get back to him or maybe he wou
ld one day be free and walk to Canada and find new Mary again. That much good fortune seemed unlikely.

  Gabriel’s uncharacteristic ill ease threatened to give away the leaving plan. For, in the days of preparation for Mary’s journey, he became a restless, pacing man who made frequent trips to the toilet.

  “Aye, Gabriel, has your old mam poisoned you?” Aaron Ridley asked with sardonic jesting on noticing his discomfort.

  “Yes, Master Aaron,” taciturn Gabriel replied with uncommon clever faces. “She has mixed up her dye pot with her stew pot and I am to suffer.” Aaron laughed loudly, for he cherished a low opinion of Annie and was ever eager to express it.

  Daniel Joshua knew a white man committed to his God and the cause of abolition who worked at a crossroads in the state of Maryland some miles north and west of the city. If Mary would get to this cooper, the man would take her up into the western mountains to join a group following bear trails all the way to Cincinnati. Along the string of trails were beads—people and resting places and some food and warmth.

  “Brother Chester—do not say this name aloud, but know it to see it,” Daniel said, and drew the letters of Chester’s name on a piece of paper. “Brother Chester is a saint for the people and he will take you on further,” he said to buoy her spirits. “He will deliver you, for he is on a firm footing with God almighty. Brother Chester and his woman will take you on.”

  Daniel patiently repeated the words to Mary and spelled the letters and impressed this all upon her. She was wanting so hard to stay with Annie and Gabriel that she was a reluctant pupil. Daniel was firm. He traced along the table with his sausage fingers, repeating the names of places on the route and the letters: C-H-E-S-T-E-R.

  At dusk of the leaving day, Annie helped Mary to dress in layers of dry breeches and wrapped Mary’s breasts and gave her three shirts to wear. She’d last longer on the foot trek if she wore the garments of a man. Annie cut away most of her hair. Plenty of gals would cry at losing their crowning glory. Even one with measly shreds upon her pate would balk at losing it all—or most of it. Mary didn’t cry. She agreed to the sense of it.

  Gabriel questioned his own resolve and his plan. Was he unable to gird himself for a trip like this one? He envied Mary’s sturdiness. Mary had, in fact, no choice. She had to go—to run. Ought he to be going with her—to look after her, to make certain she reached?

  At midnight, Mary and Daniel Joshua set out upon the path. Told to follow closely and silently, Mary sidled and crab-crawled through Georgetown alleyways behind Daniel Joshua until the cobblestones fell away under their feet. Threading through brush and tangles behind the cemetery for colored that bordered the creek, Daniel led Mary out of Georgetown. She breathed shallowly and quickly, and Daniel slowed his walking to steady the enterprise.

  When they reached the Maryland side of the creek some ways from where they’d begun, Daniel dropped back to let Mary move ahead of him.

  “Don’t look back. Keep on a’ goin’. Go all the way,” he whispered at the back of her head. “God keep you, Mary.”

  Mary froze at Daniel Joshua’s voice. She’d been expecting it. She knew he’d not go the distance with her. She knew he was bound to take her only as far as the District border. She knew he’d gone on a pace or two beyond that for sake of lookout and affection. She heard his words and was beguiled by them. “Go, Mary, go on.” The whisper pushed her along and she followed the directive. She didn’t turn to look back at him. She felt the urge to make water and to fall to the ground and wail. Her body quaked and dripped sweat. She settled her guts and walked on as she’d been instructed.

  She went on solidly and surely—avoiding puddles and sharp sticks and loud crackling branches. She remembered that Annie had cautioned her not to wet her feet if she could avoid it. She remembered Daniel’s words: walk on cat feet, run like a rabbit, sly as a fox ’round the henhouse, chew the bear’s paw. She remembered that Gabriel had simply held her hand and warmed it in his palm and held her eyes with his own. And she had savored his thirst for her.

  Now there was a place to reach before her—a person. This was a steadying knowledge. She was going toward a place and a person and a refuge. She would get there.

  She walked throughout the first night in the weak light of the waning moon. When light of morning came back, Mary’s feet were still dry.

  The sign Mary had been looking for—the ray of hope, the rest for her two feet—was on the horizon. It had come into view as she climbed the rise of a small hill. CHESTER COOPERAGE COMPANY.

  C-H-E-S-T-E-R.

  Mary had repeated the letters in her mind for all of the journey. Daniel Joshua had drummed it in that she was to reach the town of Clearwater and proceed upon the road northwest of town to a crossroads where the barn with its sign would be.

  CHESTER COOPERAGE COMPANY

  Mary squatted next to a tree until the sun dipped down. The socks were no longer on her feet. She’d taken them off to keep them dry. Now she rubbed off as much dirt as she could and put the socks back on. Her legs and feet were weary and at the end of their day’s strength, but she thought to present a decent picture.

  CHESTER COOPERAGE COMPANY

  Shooks, Barrels, and Staves

  Daniel had assured her that the white man who owned and operated this concern on the outskirts of town was a friend of the runaway. This man was of the Quaker people and he and his wife assisted any who were fleeing from slavery.

  “Wait out by the tree for the signal. If it be clear to come in, Missus will put a sign on the windowsill that says to come on in,” Daniel had schooled her. “Don’t be fearful of them. They’re good people of God who can’t abide slavery.”

  Mary kept her eye on the windows facing toward the hognut tree behind which she stood. When most of the light had faded in the sky, Missus did come to open the shutters on the window just to the right of the doorway. A woman who was nearly as wide as she was tall, Missus Chester placed a quilt on the windowsill. First she spread the cloth and shook it as if to rustle crumbs. The woman never raised her eyes up to look around. She made a careful fold in the cover to leave the full pattern clearly visible.

  Mary’s eyes fastened on the yellow at the center instead of the red carbuncle of the quilt. She could not so clearly distinguish much else of the pattern in the lowering light. But she did see the yellow center and knew it was the all-clear signal.

  Still Mary waited for the sun to go down completely. The moment came. When she heard from the birds that call out the oncoming darkness, the running girl went to the back door of the house and scratched her fingers on its wooden planks. Missus appeared at the door and Mary removed her cap and bowed her head. Her body shivered and she feared the woman might hear that every bone within her body was clicking and clacking against its neighbor.

  “Praise the Lord who has brought you,” the woman said softly but earnestly as she opened the door. Conscious of what shadows and silhouettes and slivers of light can remain to be seen from a lighted doorway, the Chesters were careful with their lanterns.

  “Come in,” the woman said, and drew Mary into the room.

  The woman held her lantern low so that Mary saw little of her face until she was well in the room and the door had been closed behind her.

  Though not tall, Mary stood a head over Emily Chester, who might have been taken for a child if not for her womanly bosom.

  Emily Chester was solicitous of Mary and immediately urged the girl off her feet. She seemed unsurprised at Mary’s soft face, revealed when she doffed her hat. The woman brought her guest to a seat near the warm fire.

  The Chester home was a small, sweet haven that served only to shelter and hold sway against the elements. It was a plainly furnished and sparsely decorated edifice that would never cause envious tongues to wag. There were only necessaries for work and simple comforts about the rooms. A spinning wheel and a weaving loom shared the small living room with four plain, straight-backed chairs and two stools.

  Emily Chester b
rought a bowl of stew, a spoon, and a chunk of bread to the chair in which she’d installed Mary. As the white woman approached her, Mary leaped to her feet, then tottered a bit before collapsing back in the chair.

  “Now, now, young one,” Emily Chester cooed. “Rest and eat and settle your nerves. I shan’t eat you. I have had my evening stew.”

  Matthew Chester joined his wife in her chuckling. He emerged from a darkened inside room as a man of typical height and breadth for his line of work. Matthew Chester did most of his business selling barrels to a local brewer of ale. This happy circumstance yielded his living wage and the perquisite of an ale belly.

  Matthew Chester’s workshop was a large structure appended to the barn. In the workshop, Chester had constructed a particular barrel that he used to transport those who must travel under cover.

  Kind as he was, Matthew Chester insisted that Mary leave at dusk of the next day. His establishment was a way station only. It was not safe to tarry.

  In a large barrel generally used for great stores of flour or rice or such, Chester had fashioned handles and a small platform upon which one traveling inside of the barrel might rest. Unlike the barrels made for his trade, this one had nearly invisible seams to allow air to reach inside. Also, there were holes whose bungs could be removed for more air and to see out. In this way, Matthew and Emily had transported former bondpersons out of the county and over the roads to the next stop on their journey. Some were frightened of the barrel and balked at being shut up. It was then that Missus Chester would implore and assure and swear that many had reached the free territory through hiding in this barrel.

  “As God is my judge, you will arrive in one piece,” she said. “Do not cry out. We are all in the hands of the Lord and upon the lips of the righteous!”

  Rather than remain at home to give in to heathen fears and premonitions, Emily Chester accompanied her husband on the trips. There were no two ways about it, Pansy, one of the mares who pulled the wagon, was a finicky creature. She favored Emily’s hand upon her reins and Matthew gladly allowed Emily to guide the team. They drove away from their place side by side, shoulder to shoulder, like the barrels in the rear of the wagon—the one barrel full of Mary, its twin filled with sorghum, and a third full of ale.