“Not any more they don’t,” Genie said, trying to expunge its sound from her memory. “Good work, Richard.”
“You too, Miss Eugenie,” he said, and gave her a shy hug.
“Has anyone seen Maggie today?”
“I was over there a little while ago, after the snow stopped,” Arthur said. “Mr. Jack was up helpin’ Maggie and the child bring wood in. Couldn’t hardly stand up to say nothin’ of haulin’ firewood, but there he was! I made ’em all sit down, and I stacked enough wood to last a week.” He looked at Genie. “He’s a lot stronger. Miss Maggie feeds him good and rubs the liniment in the worst places.” Then he looked at Ezra. “You got any laudanum left?”
Ezra nodded. “I wish I’d thought to bring it. I will when the next storm lets us.”
Arthur nodded. “The first few days he slept ’cause he was almost dead. Now that he’s better he don’t sleep much, but he needs to sleep. Miss Maggie, she knows how to give just the right amount.”
“I’ll make sure she gets it,” Ezra said. “Now we should go before it gets dark. Merry Christmas everybody!”
There were hugs and handshakes all around and then Genie and Ezra climbed into the carriage, and with Donald in the driver’s seat they left the warmth of the barn. The snow might have stopped but it was cold, and the ride was slow so it was dark when they got home. Abby and Eli were watching and waiting for them. Eli rushed out to help Donald, and Genie and Ezra hurried inside to get warm, and inside was where they remained for the next three days. Most of them anyway, for Eli and Donald romped and played in the snow like puppies under the pretense of snow removal and fight training. The first two days, however, they all enjoyed each other and ate as much food as Genie and Abby could prepare, accompanied by Abby on the piano, Ezra on the violin, and Donald’s very fine tenor.
“How beautifully you sing!” Genie exclaimed on Christmas morning when he finished a verse of “Silent Night”—in German!
Donald took a modest bow, wet his throat with some mulled cider, and performed several more carols, this time joined by Abby’s lilting soprano. Genie and Eli did not know any of the Christmas hymns but they were a most appreciative audience. In the middle of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” Abby suddenly stood, opened the piano bench, and withdrew a hymn book. She paged through it until she reached the Christmas hymns and gave the book to Genie. “Now you can sing with us.”
“But I can’t sing!” Genie exclaimed.
“You probably sound better than Ezra,” Abby said. “Good thing he plays the violin so well.”
Christmas and the following day were spent eating, singing, and, for the men, sleeping in front of the fire that burned constantly to protect against the wind and snow that battered the windows and doors as if seeking entry. On the third day Donald and Eli set out to clear the snow from doors, windows and walkways, though it sounded as if they played as much as they worked. He reported what they already suspected: Job Mayes and an unknown man in the temporary employ of one of Cortlandt’s rival bankers were responsible for providing the information about Cortlandt’s railroad to his son’s kidnappers, as well as the information about the expected arrival of Mrs. Tubman.
“Both Mayes and the other man have gone missing, so we may never know who else they told,” Ezra said.
“But Cortlandt now knows enough to protect his investment,” Abby said, indicating a knowledge of business workings.
Ezra nodded, impressed. “He also knows that having an alcoholic, spendthrift son roaming freely around town is a danger he cannot afford, so they’re sending him to England to live with poor relations.”
“How is Mrs. Cortlandt taking that?” Genie asked.
“Surprisingly well since any threat to her husband’s fortune is a threat to her way of life,” Ezra reported with a small smirk, not having forgotten the beating he’d taken because of the younger Cortlandt.
“He won’t fare well there,” Abby said almost sadly, not having forgotten how her family had to flee England because of her father’s spendthrift ways. At least Papa wasn’t an alcoholic, she thought, surprised that her memory of him no longer was clear.
“Speaking of faring well,” Ezra said to Genie, “I hope as much for your freed family.”
“As do I,” Genie said. “I hope to learn something tomorrow, weather permitting, if you and Donald will drive me to William’s? I left my cart there.”
“Of course,” Ezra said.
“And after I see to the family—whose name I don’t know—and to the Juniper family, I will go to the market, Abby. Perhaps our turkey is still there and we can have it to ring in the New Year since we didn’t have it for Christmas.”
“I do truly miss Maggie!” Abby said.
“And she misses you and she misses being here, though she seemed well. Of course, she’s obviously exhausted, caring for Jack and keeping up with Elizabeth. Or trying to keep up with Elizabeth.”
“And based on what Arthur said, Jack Juniper isn’t exactly a model patient,” Ezra said.
“Look who’s talking!” Genie and Abby said in unison and watched Ezra raise and lower his left arm and shoulder without pain as proof that he had healed.
✴ ✴ ✴
Jack was with William and Arthur when Genie arrived the next morning, intent on proving that he was healing, too. He greeted Genie with a tight embrace and Ezra and Donald with strong handclasps. “I am most pleased to see all of you,” he said, sounding more robust and looking well fed, though he was still weak. They could tell by the way he stood beside a tool cabinet for support.
“You’re looking much better, Jack,” Genie said in a show of support.
“Did you bring that laudanum?” Arthur growled.
“I don’t need laudanum!” Jack snapped before Ezra could reply.
“We’ll see what Miss Maggie has to say about that,” Arthur replied darkly, knowing exactly where the balance of power rested in the Juniper family.
Jack ignored the comment about his wife and looked from face to face. “I owe you good people my life, and while you will have my gratitude as long as I draw breath, it is money that men—and women—need and I have money to pay—”
“We don’t want your money, Mr. Juniper,” William said.
“Well, you’re getting it!” Jack snapped. “And if you don’t need or want it, give it away, but I’m giving it to you, and I have it to give because I took it from the ship’s captain. I stole it,” he said, and took a deep breath. “And I stole it because we learned that he could have docked here in Philadelphia. He could have ridden out the storm, but he went south just to sell us. The three Colored crewmen. We would have brought him a fine payday, money he would have kept in his own pockets, along with our nine weeks of pay he owed us.” Jack took another deep breath. “We couldn’t go back south, none of us, so we jumped him in his cabin just before daybreak, emptied the safe, bound and gagged him, climbed into the dinghy and released it into the sea. We almost perished then, for while the ship could have ridden out the storm, that little dinghy . . .” He closed his eyes against the memory.
“Drink this.” Arthur gave him a cup.
“Is that your damn laudanum?”
“No, it is not! It is a bit of whiskey,” Arthur growled at him.
“Oh. Well, then,” Jack said, swallowing it in a single gulp. “Now I want to tell you why I did what I did, and I speak only for myself since the other two can no longer speak for themselves.” He took a breath though not so deep a one. His tightly wrapped rib cage prevented that. “I am a runaway slave from Maryland’s Eastern shore where I became a waterman at eleven years of age. My name then was Jacob Sweetwater.”
✴ ✴ ✴
“That boy of yours is a tadpole, MaryMae,” one of the other laundresses said to Jacob’s mother as they watched the boy jump in and out of the water from their vantage point in the wash house.
“I don’t know where he gets it. I hate the water and his papa hates it worse than me. He still have night
sweats about comin’ cross the big water chained hand and foot in the bottom of that boat. He rather burn up in the fields and chop t’bacco than walk over here by the water where it be cool.”
“The Master don’ mind the boy playin’ in the water all the time?” another woman asked.
“He seem not to care and I don’ want him thinkin’ on it ’cause Jacob bring food from the water for us to eat. Better than to eat animal guts all the time.”
“That much is true. Still . . .”
“Still what?” MaryMae asked.
“The boy look to be enjoyin’ hisself and us enjoyin’ ourselfs is not a thing the Master likes to see.”
MaryMae nodded. She knew this to be true. She would keep the boy closer to her or send him to work with his father. But they both spoiled him because he was the only one they had left. The others had been sold off.
Jacob brought home crabs and shrimps that evening, enough to share with their near neighbors. Pots of rice and beans and pans of fried cornmeal cakes along with the boiled seafood made for a fine dinner. MaryMae told him that night not to spend so much time in the water because the Master didn’t like it.
“He likes to watch me dive deep and swim way far out.”
MaryMae felt a chill breeze in the hot, still night. “Who?”
“The Master.”
MaryMae and her husband shared a look of fear and dread.
“When he told you that?”
“That time when the fishing boats came back in. You ’member when I brought all them bluefish home?”
She remembered. So the Master had been watching her boy all that time. Why?
She found out in less than two weeks’ time. She kept Jacob away from the water and the Master came to learn why.
“Where ’bouts is that fish of yours, MaryMae?” He stood outside the wash house and called in to her. The other women froze.
“He’s workin’ with his papa,” MaryMae answered.
“Well, I don’t want him workin’ with his papa, I want him workin’ on one of my boats. The boy is a natural on the water.”
MaryMae did not reply. She didn’t know what to say so she remained silent. “I’m gon’ send him out on the next boat,” the Master said, “and we’ll see how he does.”
“Yessir,” MaryMae whispered.
Jacob sailed on the Master’s fishing boats for the next three years. The sun bronzed his skin, and the work built his muscles, and the seafood diet made him tall and strong. “Just like the juniper trees in my homeland,” his papa said, and Jacob liked hearing that. He liked hearing anything his papa said about his life before the awful ride on that awful ship.
“I can’t believe that a boy of mine is workin’ on a boat on the water. But if you find a way to take me back home, let me know, I’ll go,” Jacob’s papa always told him. “Find a way to take me back home.”
But Jacob didn’t know where his papa’s home was and he didn’t know where the Master’s fishing boats went. He was not permitted to sail them, only to put out the nets or the traps and bring them in when they were full. Jacob enjoyed the work, he liked being on the water, and he liked learning the names of the creatures of the sea—those who lived in it and those who flew above it and dove down for their food. Jacob even liked storms, liked watching them form, liked watching them come dancing across the water sending the message that men and their boats should leave if they wanted to live. And Jacob didn’t think it was wise to disobey the storm.
The boat’s hold was full and dark, and dancing cloud formations were sending messages at the end of what had been a good trip for Jacob . . . good because for the first time the captain had let him take the wheel. He had been watching the sky for years and he knew how to read the clouds. He also had closely watched the different captains steer the fishing boats over the years and he’d always thought that, if given the chance, he could manage a boat. Even in a storm. And he proved it this day, impressing the captain and the others who were watching. He couldn’t wait to tell his parents!
Off-loading the catch was Jacob’s least favorite part of the job, especially in a storm, but the fish couldn’t be left to rot. When they finished, he was too tired to run home. He walked slowly and let the rain bathe him so his mother wouldn’t complain that he stank. She couldn’t say that she knew he was coming because she could smell him. He smiled and walked a bit faster. He became aware that he was being watched, that his neighbors had stopped whatever they were doing to watch him walk home. He waved and most returned the greeting though some did not, which he thought was strange. The women in the wash house did not call out to him and when he looked closely, he realized that he did not recognize them. That, too, was strange. Then there were the people on the front porch of his house that he didn’t know and who, judging from their expressions, didn’t know him, either. He heard his name. A woman who worked in the wash house with his mother—he called her Aunt Avie—was running across a field toward him, calling his name and waving her arms. He stopped walking and waited for her, no longer aware of the rain beating down on him.
“They gone!” she screamed at him, trying to be heard over the howling wind. “They ain’t in there!” he heard as she got closer. “Your ma and pa. They gone.” She was breathless as she spoke the words, standing close to him now, rain pounding her. Then she was weeping. “They ain’t in that house, Jacob. They gone ’cause he sold ’em. Master done sold your mama and papa.” She gripped his arm and wept, howling with the wind.
Jacob didn’t say or do anything for a very long time. He just stood on the road looking at the small house he had raced a storm to get back to. His parents had been sold by the man he was catching fish for. “Will you do something for me, Aunt Avie?”
“Yes, baby, anything you need.”
“Shave my head? Mama always cut my hair down to the scalp when I came home ’cause she said I stank like fish.”
She nodded. “I remember and yes, I’ll cut off all your hair.”
“And she made me soak my hands and feet in lye soap ’cause she said they stank, too.”
“I remember,” Aunt Avie said again, “and I got some lye soap, and I got some clean clothes for you to put on, too.”
Before dawn the next morning, when Jacob no longer stank of fish and when he had eaten and slept, he quietly stole away from Aunt Avie’s tiny shack and went down to the dock where all the fishing boats were tied up, riding out the storm. He carried a huge, heavy hammer and he let its weight carry him quickly down until he was beneath the boats. Then he swam from one to the other beating holes into the hulls until they all were destroyed. He surfaced twice to breathe before going under again until the job was done. Then he went to the area where the nets and traps were stored, and he beat the traps to pieces with the hammer, which he then dropped into the water. He took his fish knife from his belt and sliced all the nets to shreds, then threw it into the water where it sank like the hammer. Then he swam to the secluded cove where the Master kept his racing sloops, beautiful boats that Jacob had helped build. He untied them and watched two of them drift away to be battered by the storm. The third sloop, the best and fastest one, he guided safely out of the cove and into open water before boarding it. He took the tiller and, keeping the shore in sight, he headed north, looking for a cove to sail into and hide until the storm passed. The following day he sailed up to Delaware where he sold the sloop and caught a ride from the docks on the back of a cart to a road where he could get another ride north with a farmer. He got rides on the backs of carts all the way to Philadelphia.
✴ ✴ ✴
“I was fifteen years old when I got here. I changed my name to Jack Juniper and I didn’t have any trouble getting work on boats and ships of all kinds,” Jack said to his listening audience. “But I have sailed my last voyage. I don’t know what I will do. I have no other skills but seafaring, but I do know that I will never again leave my family and I will never again work for a boat captain.”
“I hope that evil bastard n
ever caught another fish,” Arthur said.
Jack stood up and swayed, and three pairs of strong arms steadied him. He nodded his thanks, suddenly looking exhausted, but untied a leather bag from his waist.
“I will take no money from you, Jack Juniper. I have done nothing to earn it,” Genie said.
“I live in your house, woman!” Jack thundered. “That is not nothing! That is something! A lot of something!”
Before Genie could respond Peter Blanding entered through the back door, raising worry in Arthur and William, but it was Genie he wanted. “I heard you were here, Eugenia. I need your help, please. The family you rescued—they will not speak or open the door or come out. I don’t know if they’re all right because they won’t answer when I call out.” Peter was frantic.
William grabbed his coat but Genie waved him off. “I’ll go, William. Ezra, will you and Donald be here for a while?”
“We will take Jack home and visit a while with Maggie and Elizabeth, then we will return here.”
“Good,” Genie said, and left with Peter, knowing that her friends would fail in their attempts to refuse Jack Juniper’s money.
Most of the walks fronting the stores on the main street were cleared of snow so Genie and Peter walked quickly to his clock and watch repair shop. Genie went around to the back, to the entrance of the apartment there and knocked on the door.
“Robert. Josephine. Mary. I’m Eugenia Oliver. I’m the person who brought you away from Montague Wright’s house. Please open the door.” She had spoken softly, her mouth against the door, so as not to frighten them. She knocked again and waited. Finally, she heard the latch released and the door opened a crack.
“Hello, Robert,” she said. “May I come in?”
He didn’t respond but neither did he close the door, so Genie pushed it slowly open. The three of them were huddled together in the middle of the floor, terrified. They wore different clothes from the last time she’d seen them, and they had shoes. She knew they had arrived the previous night, but the beds had not been slept in nor had breakfast been cooked, although the stove had been fed because it was warm. It took a moment but she finally understood that these people did not know how to be free. All of the runaways she knew, herself included, had survived in spite of the fact that there had been no assistance. It was survive or perish. She closed her eyes. Was it a mistake to free them? “Mistress?” Josephine whispered, her voice shaking.
Two Wings to Fly Away Page 21