Daniel Webster Jackson & The Wrongway Railroad

by Robert Walker

  Daniel felt unsure whether he ought to tell Joe about the runaway. Joe's feelings about slaves ran high, depending on what his pap told him. His pap's views depended on whether he was drunk or sober. Joe believed no man knew more about life than his pap, drunk or sober.

  "Got lost and turned around in the grass," replied Daniel. "It all looks the same, you know."

  "Lost?" Joe said with a laugh. "You?"

  "You know, like when you can't find your way," Daniel answered and quickly changed the subject. "Look here, you ever hear of that hole before?"

  "What hole?" Joe was all of two years older than Daniel.

  "The hole Old Billy told the sheriff and his men all about."

  "Oh, you mean the yarn!"

  "You ever hear tell of it before?"

  "Sure, I heard it lots of times. Just never paid it no mind."

  "Where else ya hear of that hole?"

  "Heard my pap talking 'bout it once to some men. But black folks mostly tells about it."

  "Do you believe it?" asked Daniel.

  "Pay it as much mind as any of Old Billy's ghost and goblin stories."

  "Don't you believe any of Old Billy's tales?"

  "Sure," replied Joe, "some of 'em. The ones with real names, real dates and real places."

  "Why'd you believe them?"

  "They can be proved—authenticated, my pap says."

  Daniel looked at Joe's chain around his neck with the metal charm dangling there. It was a good luck charm Joe had bought back from Old Billy. After selling it, Joe'd had a run of awful luck. Then be bought it back. Maybe Joe was the wrong person to have this talk with, Daniel decided. Besides, they'd be parting in a few minutes, having reached Hannibal. What would Joe say if I told him about the runaway? he wondered.

  Joe lived in shantytown, along the north stretch of river leading into town. Prospectors, trappers, traders and traveling folk on their way to the territories camped like a band of gypsies. Nine months of the year fathers took out for the territories to hunt for bison, furs or gold. The other three months, men like Joe's pap, who'd returned beaten and tired, spent their time drinking and telling stories of their adventures in the wilderness. You couldn't tell Joe that it would be safer to believe Old Billy's tales. He'd fight you, sure you were calling his pap a liar.

  "You ever wonder what becomes of those runaways who never get found?" Daniel finally asked.

  "No."

  "Ain't you even curious?"

  "Don't know why they run away in the first place," Joe answered, thinking hard. "Pap don't even know. He says it must be something in their blood. Maybe the same thing that makes 'em black and don't make us black-skinned, as pap says."

  Daniel did not answer. He stood still and tried to understand what Joe and just said.

  "But if pap don't understand it, a grown up man like him, fought in the Mexico war and all, then how you think we can ever understand it?"

  Daniel only frowned while Joe went on talking. "Pap says it ain't smart to try to figure out what a black man is thinking. He says he knows folks who've gone crazy trying to understand 'em. He thinks Colonel Halverston is that way."

  They reached the fork in the dusty road which led to shantytown, and Joe ran off, turning once to wave to Daniel. Daniel looked ahead up the town road where some few lights hung out over the harbor. Boats and barges were tied-to for the night. He dreaded going home to his cramped room out back of Mrs. Shorr's. Mrs. Shorr boarded as many wards of the court and orphans as she could find or make room for on her floors and in her sheds. For each child she boarded. Judge Hatcher saw to it the town paid her properly. Daniel did not know how much Mrs. Shorr got for each of her "children" as she called them, but he did know that in the bargain, she gained a houseful of window washers, gardeners, painters, menders, fishermen, hog-sloppers, hunters, knitters, butter churners, wheel spinners, and wood choppers.

  For his trouble, Daniel gained a straw-tick mattress in a lean-to which he shared with three other of Mrs. Shorr's unfortunate children. The lucky boys and girls who lived in the house ate better and were generally treated better, Mrs. Shorr having long before established her system of rewards and punishments.

  The lean-to, a crumbling, aged shack that had been built onto the freshly white-washed main house, came into Daniel's view. As he approached, he shook his head over the sad sight. The old palace, he called it. It would fall in one day, he told himself. Daniel saw that the lights remained out, and everything felt silent and still. He would have no trouble slipping back into his bed.

  He'd lived with Mrs. Shorr for nine years, since he was six, the year his parents caught the fever and died. He thought about his parents now and why they had first traveled to Hannibal. The Jacksons had traded all the way from a place called Hartford in Connecticut, following the Ohio River to St. Louis, Missouri, where they purchased a new wagon and more trading goods. They had intended to trade their way to California. But they stopped in Hannibal in search of Daniel's maternal uncle who'd come ahead of them.

  One day a couple years back after Daniel asked around, Old Billy took him aside and told him about his father and mother. Old Billy said he never saw any man handle a team of horses the way Daniel's pap had, the day he'd thundered down Main Street with Daniel's mother beside him. The wagon, heavy with a load of chairs, trunks, dishpans, pots, ladles, spoons, gourds, tins, saucers and cups, threatened to collapse.

  Samuel Todd Jackson had been his name. He stood six foot four and had eyes of a hazelnut brown. He'd quit drinking at age nineteen and became a trader, a traveling tinker man, to make his way to the Pacific Ocean. Lean and tall, Sam Jackson was handsome when he laughed. Old Billy said, "And your pap laughed all the time."

  Daniel's mother, Carrie Webster, was a pretty, small woman with long hair, the color of cornsilk. Billy told Daniel that his mother had been strong and brave. She wanted to go west as much as her husband. Together, Daniel's parents had put in to Hannibal for a brother of hers who was no longer there, to take on more supplies, and to do some trading. But it proved a bad year all around, and they had to stay on for a time. When the sickness came to Hannibal that year, she'd gone from house to house to help out any way she could. The fever took them both.

  Just as Daniel reached the door, Mrs. Shorr, with a broomstick in her hand, jumped out at him. He thought immediately of Old Billy's story of the witches in Seaton woods. "Oh, Mrs. Shorr! I thought you was a witch!"

  "Witch, I'll give you witch! You'll wish I was just a witch!" She began, thrashing at him with the broom.

  "Where you been, boy? What Devil's nest you been in this time o'night? Answer!"

  Hit several times by the broom, Daniel reached out and snatched it from the old woman's hands. Mrs. Shorr, a thin-faced, wizened woman, looked as stiff as the clothes on her line left in the frost. She threw up her skinny arms shouting, "You going to attack? You Devil boy! Come ahead! I'm man enough to knock you over, you whelp!"

  At the doorway to the lean-to stood Jeremy Small and Tad Burroughs, Jeremiah and Thaddeus, as Mrs. Shorr called the boys, in the same nasal way she would call him Daniel Webster. Tad and Jeremy, several years younger than Daniel, stared out at the broom battle going on. Daniel felt sorry for their little hungry bodies, their fears, and their position in the lean-to, with Mrs. Shorr squeezing their childhood from them. Too bad they've been placed with her, he thought. And I'm as trapped as they are. He dropped the broom at his feet, stared into Mrs. Shorr's steely gray eyes and went into the lean-to without another word. Mrs. Shorr's remarks sailed over the heads of the other children at the doorway.

  "I'll just see about you tomorrow, Daniel Webster! I'll just see to you. Mark my word, I will! Judge Hatcher'll hear of this. I've got enough to worry my soul without you out in the night over to those Negro quarters, getting into who knows what sort of trouble! Tampering with them voodoo ways of theirs!"

  She lashed out at Tad and Jeremy, pushed them into the lean-to, and closed the door, leaving all of her court- appoint
ed charges in the darkness.

  TWO

  THE JUDGE'S SPY

  "After all the poor woman's done for you, Daniel," moaned Judge Hatcher. "How can you go on disobeying her and hurting her—raising a rake to her!"

  "It was a broom, and she raised it to me," answered Daniel, trembling before the judge's desk in the middle of the clapboard courthouse.

  "She can hit you all she wants, son. She's got your best interest at heart. She's got to raise you up a proper, respectful citizen. She doesn't have to do it, she just does!"

  Judge Hatcher allowed this to sink in before he climbed from his wooden chair and stepped around the desk to stand over Daniel. "You ought to be proper ashamed of yourself, sassing Mrs. Shorr, taking her broom from her, and chasing her with a rake."

  Daniel dropped his head and stared at his feet.

  "She tells me you been sneaking off. Now, son, are you going to tell me where you got off to last night?"

  "No place particular," he replied.

  "Mrs. Shorr thinks you were on some Devil's errand, son. Now out with it!"

  "Just walked over to Colonel Halverston's at the slave quarters is all."

  The judge leaned in closer, his jaw drooping as he said, "Halverston's place? Really? Mrs. Shorr didn't say it was to Halverston's you've been going." The judge stroked his hairless chin as if pulling on an invisible beard. He paced and next he let out a thin-sounding, "Hmmm...."

  "Mayn't I be going now, sir?" asked Daniel, head still hanging, eyes fixed on the floor. He watched as the judge's shoes came in and out of his sight, the wood floor squeaking as the shoes went over loose boards.

  Instead of answering, the judge began sizing Daniel up like a heifer or a hog at the Hannibal Founder's Day Fair.

  "Mrs. Shorr, she's sore angry with me," Daniel shakily began, "and she lay out twelve, maybe thirteen day’s worth of chores, and she won't never let me take time from her school to do the work, so I—"

  Suddenly, Judge Hatcher erupted with words, saying, "Why do you go out there, Daniel? To Halverston's slave quarters?"

  "Don't rightly know. Fun maybe?"

  The judge hummed through his teeth, thinking deeper thoughts, when again he erupted. "Why, it's Old Billy, ain't it?"

  "Old Billy, sir?"

  "Your taken with Old Black Billy's wild yarns and ghosts stories. Is that right?" He didn't wait for Daniel's answer. "You'll never get nowhere in this life sitting and listening to foolish stories of witches and ghouls told by an old man, son."

  "But Old Billy tells some stories that are true," Daniel defended Old Billy.

  "True? Old Billy and the word true don't even run together, son. Billy never stops himself to ask which is true and which is made up."

  "What about the story he told me about my mam and my pap? It's got names and dates and places-things you may au-au-auth-thin-icate."

  The judge considered this a moment. "I reckon the one he tells about your folks is close enough to the truth."

  Daniel breathed in relief, while Judge Hatcher started down another path, asking, "You ever see anything unusual out there at the colonel's place, son?"

  Giving thought to the two slaves who'd shinnied down the thick ash, and the one who'd held a gutting knife to his throat, Daniel wondered if he dared say a word. He feared Old Billy could be harmed by what he told. "Unusual?" he finally asked.

  "Unusual, strange goings-on, anything out of the ordinary? Any strangers thereabouts?" The questions now poured flood-like from the judge, his eyes wide.

  "Not any so's I'd notice."

  "What does that mean?" Hatcher asked.

  "I haven't seen no strangers that I know out that way, sir," replied Daniel.

  Exasperated, his hands on his head now, the judge said, "Daniel, if they're strangers, of course you aren't going to know any of 'em."

  "That's what I said; wasn't that what I said?" Daniel didn't wish to lie to Judge Hatcher, not if he could help

  it, but he didn't want Billy fetching any trouble either. Still, Judge Hatcher stood for the law hereabouts. He stood for the rules, and Daniel knew a smart body didn't lie to a lawman.

  "I'm going to ask you once more, Daniel. Did you ever see anyone—white, black, green, I don't care what color—anyone who did not belong out at Halverston's? Anything come to mind?" The judge's round belly heaved now, his voice thick. "Did you meet anyone there, for instance, who Old Billy introduced around as his long lost cousin or uncle or brother or sister? Anything like that?"

  "No sir, no cousins or other relatives."

  Daniel knew that Sheriff Brisbane, whose office opened on this one, had already reported to Hatcher on what had happened at Halverston's, how they had lost the chase and the sheriff s dog to a mystery. By saying nothing, at least he'd keep the sheriff out of trouble, as well as Old Billy. Still, Daniel's head felt mixed up, unsure what to do. If the judge found out later that he withheld information, he might be arrested for aiding and abetting fugitive slaves. Locked up as an abolitionist, Daniel would never be able to face anyone in Hannibal ever again.

  The judge leaned his large frame against his desk, picked up a sheet of paper and fanned himself. While he was not as large around as the sheriff. Judge Hatcher seemed always to be sweating.

  The judge shot out a question like buckshot from a scatter gun. "You ever hear Old Billy or any of them black folk of Halverston's tell about a hole, a great big hole that opens up out there? One that swallows up runaways and dogs whole?"

  Daniel was afraid to say yes and afraid to say no. "No, sir, I ain't never heard of it, not while Old Billy was telling stories last night." It wasn't quite a lie. Old Billy didn't say it while he was telling stories. He'd said it when the sheriff began his search. "And, I ain't never seen nor heard nothing unusual out at Colonel Halverston's."

  The judge began to pace again. The wood flooring again squeaked under his weight. The judge was as tall as Colonel Halverston. His face was largely made up of a big jaw, extending way out beyond his neck, in a hang-dog, angry fashion lately. He now spoke as if to himself now. "I don't like that Halverston. Elections coming up, and he's after my job."

  Just then Sheriff Brisbane arrived. "Wanted to see me?"

  "No," answered the judge. Then he raised his hands and approached the sheriff, contradicting himself. "I mean, yes. But, I got a different plan now."

  "A different plan?" asked the sheriff.

  "Come over here, Henry," the judge said as he guided the sheriff to where Daniel stood. "Here's my new plan." He pointed right at Daniel.

  The sheriff stared at Daniel Webster Jackson, unimpressed. "This here is young Webster Jackson, ain't it?"

  "Young Daniel here is going to help me win this election."

  "Why, there ain't no reason to worry about this election, judge. I told you, nobody's going to vote for the colonel. He's too new to these parts."

  "He's been here for seven years, Henry."

  "But he wasn't born here, judge. He ain't even Missouri-born."

  "I come from Virginia myself, Henry." "And he's a colonel in the U.S. Cavalry," moaned the judge.

  "Was, judge. Was a colonel."

  "Everyone still calls him colonel. He calls himself colonel. He's stumping as colonel. And I hear talk, Henry, talk that'll put you and me out of business."

  "West Point colonel, fought in the Mexico War," said Brisbane, who was still not impressed. "Resigned his commission, judge. You got that!"

  "All you know is he resigned his commission," sniffed the judge. "You don't know why. Why?"

  "I told you, nobody knows why. He just up and did it. Just say it was cowardice."

  "He hardly strikes me as a coward."

  "He don't have to strike you as a coward. We just have to spread the rumor and let people think what they will."

  "You wouldn't do that, would you, judge?" asked Daniel.

  The sheriff and the judge looked at Daniel at the same moment with the same intensity in their eyes.

  "No," bega
n the sheriff. "Nobody'd do that."

  Judge Hatcher put up a hand for the sheriff to stop talking, and he put his arm around Daniel's shoulder and led him to a corner.

  "Daniel, you do want to help me, don't you? I've always done right by you, you know that. I wouldn't lie, cheat, or steal anything, including one vote from an honest man, but this here colonel's not an honest man. He's going around telling tales about the sheriff and me—lies, just so he can get elected."

  "Lies?" repeated Daniel.

  "You know what the Good Book says about an eye for an eye; well, in this case it's a lie for a lie."

  "Then you're calling yourself a liar, judge?"

  "No, no! Don't mean I'm a liar, not during an election. Elections are run that way. The colonel's getting folks all worked up over the number of runaway slaves that've gotten free. Says he can do better! See to it they are stopped! He even has a head count on the number of slaves reported run away and never caught! Says he's kept it since he moved into these parts seven years ago—phony figures, more lies! It's plain to see he's been planning this all along. Just when the iron's hot, he goes to make his play for my job."

  The sheriff listened in on the judge's words, and joining them, he said, "We've done all we can, judge. I mean, I've raided his place so many times I found our footprints still there from the last time! And we found nothing! For the life of me, I can't see why any man would risk life in prison or a hanging just so he can have your job...ahhh, sir."

  "He's got the notion we're making off with the town treasury, Henry, and he thinks he can do better running Hannibal." The judge shook his head in disbelief. "I give up my life for this godforsaken place, and what do I get in return? Lowdown accusations."

  The sheriff placed a hand on Judge Hatcher's shoulder and said, "If we could only find out just how them runaways disappear on us out yonder."

  "We're going to," stated the judge. "With young Daniel's help, we're going to learn precisely what sort of magician's trick is going on out there."