by Zakes Mda
The Spirit took charge of their lives once more, as indicated by the occasional presence of Massa Blue Fly, who was nowhere to be seen in the two weeks they had succor at the hermit’s cabin. On one occasion the Spirit placed on their path a dead deer covered in snow and nicely preserved, perhaps for months or weeks depending on how long the place had been frozen like that. The boys roasted the meat on an open fire on the spot, had a feast, and then took some of it with them as they trudged the breadth of Meigs County. They had become reckless for they did not only walk in the night but at daytime too. Sometimes the Spirit placed them on top of a hill where they sledded down on pine branches. All the while Nicodemus held very tightly to his sampler and Abednego to the deer meat wrapped in the deerskin. Hills dressed only in snow alternated with white forests devoid of foliage, short-lived valleys of driven snow that suddenly became steep slopes, glorious summits and then sliding down again to deep gorges with frozen creeks. On one particularly steep hill they rolled down the slope, their sleds breaking to pieces and tumbling after them, until they got to a wooded valley. They nevertheless did not let go of their bundles.
They took a rest in the woods and Nicodemus played his flute, which he found relaxing and calming. They were startled by the approach of a huge black man in a double-breasted black frock coat, brownish canvas pants and black calf boots. He wore a woolen hat that protected his ears from the cold and his hands were in thick mittens. The boys were wide-eyed because they had never seen such a well-heeled black person before. Perhaps even snow-covered rolling hills yielded mirages.
Massa Blue Fly buzzed around with much ceremony, mocking the man’s attempts at swatting it off, and then flew away never to be seen again.
“What have we here?” the gigantic man asked, looking down at the boys.
He sized them up, and immediately recognized them as fugitives because of their dirty and tattered clothes. “Who said this ain’t no season for them runaways?”
They were thinking of dashing away when he grabbed them by the scruff of their necks and said: “Welcome to the Underground Railroad. Calm down. And next time remember it ain’t the smartest thing to play music if you trying to hide.”
They relaxed a bit when they saw that he meant them no harm.
His name was Birdman, he said, and he was an Underground Railroad conductor. He was always scouting around the woods for runaways, and then transporting them in his wagon to Underground Railroad stations in Athens. He would do the same for them and would place them in a safe house where they would get a thorough bath and fresh clothing. He discouraged them from any notion of trying to reach Berlin Crossroads in Mercer County, for that was far west on the Indiana border. The whole state was crawling with bounty hunters and slave catchers. They would surely be caught and sent back to Virginia for a reward before they got anywhere near Mercer County.
In Birdman the boys saw for the first time an African who was owned by nobody. They knew there were such Africans. They had heard that some of the slave stealers who covertly visited Fairfield Farms on occasion were free blacks, but they had never seen one with their own eyes.
They were surprised to hear that Birdman already knew about the escapees from Fairfield Farms and that Mr. David Fairfield was offering a substantial reward of five hundred dollars—instead of the normal two hundred—especially for his prime stud, Nicodemus. Birdman told them that he knew all this from the Underground Railroad grapevine, which was very effective indeed. Abednego felt insulted and slighted that The Owner did not consider him worthy of any such big reward on his head, even though he was supposed to have sired him. Oh, yes, people gossiped about his pedigree at Fairfield Farms until it reached his ears!
It dawned on the boys as Birdman spoke that the Underground Railroad was neither a railroad nor was it under the ground. The lines that he talked about were trails, the conductors were people like him, and the stations were safe houses. They were passengers, although they did not understand how they could be called that since they had actually looked for their freedom themselves up to that point and had not been ferried around like passengers.
Birdman was impressed that the boys had made it all the way on their own without any assistance from the Underground Railroad network. “Well, from now on you gonna be my passengers,” he said. “I am gonna look after you and hand you over to other conductors until you get to Canada.”
When he realized the boys were reluctant to let go of their Berlin Crossroads dream, he stressed once more: “Better you forget about Berlin Crossroads for now. No safe place for fugitives. Besides, it ain’t on your way to Canada.”
The boys were impressed that Birdman seemed to be so fearless that he operated alone on such dangerous missions. Many conductors, he told them, went around guarded by armed men. But he preferred to work on his own because he attracted less attention that way. Also he was able to escape easily from slave hunters and from the law, using wiles instead of force, unless it was absolutely necessary to use force.
Birdman led them to his wagon hidden in a gully where his two horses were feeding on the hay that was stacked at the back. He unloaded some of the hay to reveal a secret compartment on the wagon. Nicodemus would hide in the compartment. Abednego would dress up as a woman and wear a broad-brimmed bonnet. The gear was all there in the secret compartment. With his complexion he would pass as a white woman. Birdman would be her manservant. But first he would have to discard the deerskin and the meat since they would be well fed from then on. Nicodemus wondered why they had to go through all the subterfuge when they believed that they were now in a free state that did not have any slavery. Birdman explained to the boys that Ohio was not as free as blacks south of the river thought it was. In reality the Ohio River was no River Jordan and Ohio was no Promised Land. In this supposedly free state fugitive slave laws forbade the assisting of escaping slaves and the penalties were high. And of course there was always the danger of slave hunters, who operated with impunity in the southern areas of the state, where sometimes they even captured free blacks to sell in the neighboring slaveholding states.
Birdman rode with his secret cargo and his “white employer” through Meigs County into Athens County without raising any suspicion at all. Lying flat on his stomach in the false bottom of the wagon Nicodemus could hear the rhythm of the shod horses on the cobbled streets of the city of Athens. Abednego sat humped like the old lady he was supposed to be next to Birdman, who kept on reminding him not to stare at the sights and people in the street. In no time they arrived at an Underground Railroad station in East Washington Street, a red-brick building like most buildings in town.
The stationmaster was a middle-aged white man in a black frock coat and top hat and with well-nourished pink cheeks. He was a Quaker, Birdman told the boys as he ushered them into the house, with Nicodemus clutching his quilt bundle.
How come there was no quilt hanging out with the Log Cabin design for runaways to identify the house as a place of refuge? The house was known only to a few conductors, Birdman explained. The stationmaster had a strong suspicion—though he could not be sure of this—that the quilt sign was now known to some of the slave hunters. Sometimes they sent out well-paid black traitors who pretended to be runaways in order to uncover some of the stations. The Quaker man couldn’t be too careful who he welcomed at his Underground Railroad station.
“Quilts ain’t no use to no one no more,” observed Nicodemus.
On the contrary, Birdman corrected him; quilts still served an important function. They bound the individuals into a cohesive force, and reminded them of their duty to freedom. Abednego reminded his brother that indeed it was the designs that had inspired them to carry out the escape. The designs, Nicodemus agreed, had also given them general advice on how to conduct themselves on the road and what signs to look for in their quest for survival. The boys had to find their own way. The quilts could not be so specific as to act as a map to freedom. Quilts were like sayings, Birdman added, they were like adages and
proverbs learned from the elders and were effective in jolting the people’s memory and in recording the values of the community for present and future generations. Quilt designs did not map out the actual route to the Promised Land but helped the seekers to remember those things that were important in their lives. They did the same work as spirituals. Like the stories the storytellers and the griots of the old continent told, whose rhymes and rhythms forced people never to forget them and the history they contained, the patterns and colors and designs and ties and stitches of quilts were mnemonic.
The way Birdman talked about quilts made Nicodemus fall deeply in love with his. He held it close to his chest. He vowed that he would keep it and treasure it for as long as he lived, and would of course share it with Abednego since it contained the soul of their mother. Its batting was made of the Abyssinian Queen’s old dress. As he caressed it he could feel the herbs placed in the batting to ward off evil spirits and to give it curative powers.
After they had taken a bath the stationmaster gave the boys a change of clothes and his equally ample wife fed them cheese and bread.
When Birdman took leave of them, promising to see them the next day with plans for their escape to the north, the boys were reluctant to remain at the station. It was obvious that they did not trust the stationmaster because he was white. Birdman assured them that the man could be trusted as he was a hard-core abolitionist and many abolitionists were white. Indeed, the term was associated only with whites whereas in fact blacks were abolitionists too since they were fighting for the abolishment of slavery. The boys, however, could not forget how they were betrayed by a slave hunter who posed as an abolitionist back in Virginia.
The boys were kept in the basement and were given strict instructions not to venture outside. Nicodemus was addicted to his flute, so before they went to sleep on the mattresses and thick blankets laid out on the floor for them he played it for a while. Abednego could not wait to get into the comfortable bedding after all those days sleeping rough on the road. Soon he was fast asleep and dreaming of the Abyssinian Queen singing a lullaby to the sun.
Deep in the night the boys were awoken by loud banging at the door and angry shouts demanding that it be opened forthwith. The stationmaster rushed to the basement with a lantern. “I know that voice,” he said. “William Tobias. Slave catcher from Virginia. Crosses the Ohio with impunity in search of runaways. Works with lackeys in southeast Ohio. His spies must have seen Birdman unloading the passengers…you, I mean.”
Tobias was known as a dangerous man who would stop at nothing to track down his quarry. He was running a thriving business hunting down fugitives and returning them to their owners for the reward. And it was quite substantial. One hundred dollars for bringing a slave back to Kentucky or Virginia. Two hundred if the slave had already crossed the Ohio. When he couldn’t find any runaways the unscrupulous Tobias captured free blacks and sold them to other unscrupulous slaveholders in his home state.
Tobias and two henchmen broke down the main door and the stationmaster ran up the stairs to meet the invaders before they could discover the boys.
“We know they’re here,” said Tobias.
“Yeah,” said another man. “Mr. Tobias can smell a fugitive nigger a mile away. That’s why he don’t need no dogs. He’s a bloodhound hisself.”
“There’s no one here,” said the stationmaster. “Just me and my wife.”
“And some parcel that Birdman deposited,” said Tobias. “Search the house!”
He knew already that there was a fat reward for the black boy and was eager to lay his paws on him. His men pushed the stationmaster aside and rushed into the house. “The basement,” shouted Tobias. “That’s where they gonna be.”
Nicodemus was not going to be captured without a fight. As the men rushed down the stairs he lunged at the first henchman and held his neck firmly in his grip. They rolled on the floor while Nicodemus pummeled the man’s face. At that time Abednego was lashing out with a broomstick, regretting the folly of giving the old hermit their musket. Nicodemus jumped to his feet and saw Tobias and the second henchman ready to pounce on him. He kicked the henchman on the floor very hard and was about to charge at Tobias when a shot rang. Nicodemus fell to the floor. Slowly the first henchman rose from the floor, with a smoking gun in his hand.
“You bastard!” screeched William Tobias. “You killed my five hundred big ones!”
Tobias drew his six-shooter and shot the first henchman. He and the second henchman fled and rode away on their horses, leaving their dead partner in the basement for the Underground Railroad people to worry about.
The story is told by the ghost trees that after the death of Nicodemus, Abednego found refuge in Tabler Town, long before the town changed its name to Kilvert. Nicodemus’s dying words were to urge his elder brother not to give up on their dream to follow the North Star to its conclusion, until he reached Canada. Abednego, however, decided not to proceed to Canaan, in order to be near his brother. After Birdman and the Quaker stationmaster left him in Tabler Town, he found solace in the floods that assumed a life of their own and gave him a feeling of security; in the sycamore trees whose hollow hearts hid beautiful secrets, like the heart of the tree outside his mother’s cabin; and in the sampler that constantly reminded him of the Abyssinian Queen singing to the sun.
He never got to know that the blue fly returned and hovered over her, and she died with a broad smile on her face.
And the sampler! Oh, the sampler! He would jealously guard it for it was the only memory of his brother that was left.
For the first time Abednego got to know the meaning of freedom among the tribes—the Shawnee and the Cherokee and the Powhatan—that lived side-by-side in the region. He learned about the God of the Shawnee, the Great Creator known as “Our Grandmother,” and paid his respects to Her, and gave his thanks for being brought to this beautiful place. Having been brought up by the graceful Abyssinian Queen, he found it comforting that the Creator was a woman. That was one thing the preachers of his Christian church that met in the Fairfield Farms big barn had failed to teach him.
He was not the only fugitive who found refuge among the tribes. The most famous was the one who gave his name to the town: Michael Tabler.
The ghost trees began Michael Tabler’s story at his father’s plantation in Ravenswood, Virginia, just across the Ohio River. Young Michael foolishly fell in love with his father’s slave, a willowy mulatto beauty called Hannah. The senior Tabler was determined to put to an abrupt stop all this madness, so he sold Hannah to some plantation far away from Ravenswood. But young Michael was just as determined that nothing would come between him and his love for Hannah. He searched for her until he found her, and then purchased her back from the new owner. He dared not take her back to his father’s plantation, so like many exiles before him he crossed the Ohio River and settled among the “Indian” tribes in Rome Township in the southeast of Ohio. He bought a piece of land, founding the village of Tabler Town, which later became known as Kilvert in its incarnation as a coal mining town.
Abednego befriended the Tablers and in later years their eleven sons, many of whom married local Native American women. He was also welcomed with open arms by a community of Africans who had settled there from Virginia over the years, some from as early as the late 1700s and others recent arrivals brought by the likes of Birdman and his fellow conductors of the Underground Railroad. Many of these Africans, all former slaves, intermarried with the Native Americans and with the Irish immigrants who had also received sanctuary in Tabler Town. A new race of people was founded.
Abednego learned that the Ottawa tribe of Ohio had a tradition of helping runaway slaves long before the Underground Railroad. So did the tribes of Rome Township. That was why he found so many black people. This confirmed some of the stories that the Abyssinian Queen used to tell about Africans who were welcomed by Native American tribes, some of them even becoming chiefs.
At first Abednego had great diffic
ulty adapting to a life as a free man. For a long time there was a lot of anger in him at what had been done to his people. As a very light complexioned mulatto he was obsessed with blackening the race in defiance of those who had enslaved him and his mother. An Irish girl fell in love with him, but he was determined to fight against his own feelings for her, because he wanted to marry an African girl—as black as his mother. A woman who would tell stories of the old continent as the Abyssinian Queen used to do.
Love, however, had other plans for him. He fell in love with a Native American woman—the daughter of Harry Corbett, a Powhatan gentleman with vast orchards—and married her.
5
A Taliban in the House
Orpah is obsessed with ghost trees. That’s what these designs tell me. The trees feature in them in many forms. Fine detail of the mottled bark in shades of brown and gray and green and red and blue. And in black and white. Cracked branches and hollow trunks twisted in agony. Roots exposed above the earth. Knees bent in prayer. Trees in flight. Trees in dance. Trees caught in a whirlwind. Trees in a trance. White branches spreading on a black background like the web of a demented spider. Ghost trees in all shapes and sizes, often so stylized you wouldn’t know they were ghost trees. You wouldn’t know they were trees at all. You would just feel their power from the goosebumps that run amok all over your body. At least, that’s what they do to me. Damn that Orpah with her sitar! And now these designs; all executed in wax crayons by an adept but naive hand.
It’s been weeks since I retrieved them from the ghost tree and I can’t help but look at them every day. Before I sleep I take in every detail, and in the morning when I wake up I do the same. I have not told anyone about them. Once I thought I would talk to Orpah about them when I chanced upon her in the kitchen where she was making coffee for herself. But as soon as I entered she abruptly left, abandoning the boiling water on the stove. I went after her as she fled through the kitchen door and around the porch until she disappeared into a door that I later learned was another entrance to her room. They call it the mother-in-law room because of that entrance. I had not been aware it led to her room because there is another door that opens from the passageway into her room. I stood at the door and pleaded: “Please, Orpah, I mean you no harm. I just want to talk to you about something I found.”