The Hidden Light of Northern Fires

by Daren Wang

The den warmed with his breath and he dozed. He tried to recall the warmth of the Virginia sun on his bare shoulders and invoked a memory of a picnic on a bluff overlooking the Shenandoah with his mother and sister. It was his tenth birthday, and somehow his mother had managed half a chicken for the occasion. She spread the treasure out on a cloth, and his sister, Alaura, a six-year-old with her hair tied with blue rags that passed for ribbons, stared at the riches with a look of amazement and joy.

  “It’s your brother’s birthday,” their mother said, the joy of putting good food in front of her children shining bright in her face.

  His sister reached for the leg from the small pile of pieces, and he remembered thinking that was the piece he wanted, that it was his birthday and that he should get first pick. But then she cupped it in her hands like it was a precious jewel, and offered it to him.

  “Happy birthday, Joey,” she said, her dimples furrowing into her cheeks.

  Joe took the piece of chicken, and bent over to kiss her, because he could not help but kiss her, and she wrapped her arms around him.

  “You’re my favorite brother.” She giggled.

  “Not that you have many choices,” he said, laughing back at her, and waited until his mother signaled that he could take a bite.

  His mother was gone now, sold down to Mississippi, and dead soon after. And now he had left Alaura all alone. He thought of the way that Yates Bell had often eyed her, and he wished as he had a million times that he had taken her with him.

  He’d been saving to buy her papers before he ran, had even talked it over with old Mr. Bell, but he couldn’t imagine how he could do it now. Not after the money was gone. Not after running. Not after nearly killing Yates.

  “I’ll get you free, I swear,” he said to the thought of her, but he knew the words carried no more weight than the white mist they made in the cold air.

  He slipped into a dream of the plantation and of the woods around Harpers Ferry, and the little shack near the sawmill where he used to sleep.

  His fever came stronger, and it called other things into his dreams: the crack of the dog’s neck jolting through his hands, the sound of the limb breaking on that man’s face, the sight of the poor boy down the long barrel.

  He woke to the sound of a rider coming down the creek in the late afternoon. Joe peeked out to see the skinny boy, talking to himself as the horse picked its way through the stone creek bed and falling snow, passing within yards of the den.

  Terrified, Joe squeezed deeper into the cave and gripped the musket with the ruined load, pulling more of the rotten leaves over himself, trying to make out what he was saying until he had rode on.

  Joe’s leg throbbed and he sweated and shivered in the cold air. He imagined himself dying in the little hole, his body never to be found; he smiled grimly, thinking how the torment of not ever knowing if he was dead would plague Yates, but then he thought of Alaura and his promise.

  When the gray light dimmed, he broke through snow at the mouth of the cave and slid down the embankment to the water’s edge. His fever had taken on an edge, and he could not remember where he was, but he understood he would not survive another night in the cave. His leg throbbed and a trickle of blood seeped through the torn pant leg as he set out into the night made darker with clouds.

  He came to a road, turned west to put the wind at his back, and stumbled again into the open fields. His thin coat was soaked through with cold sweat. He teetered through a cornfield, and into a line of poplars, upright and gray against the black sky. Squeezing through a gap in the enmeshed trees, he found himself on a hard road rutted with wagon tracks leading past a two-story white house with a wide front porch sitting above the main road. A red barn sat at the foot of the incline and small, neat buildings lined the drive and the barnyard. A white horseshoe was tacked over the wide doors of the barn. He knew that should mean something but could not remember what.

  The windows of the house glowed in the night. He could see women in the kitchen, laughing as they washed dishes. Smoke from the chimney perfumed the night, and two men sat together by a fireplace in the parlor. Trembling with cold, Joe stumbled up to the window. The red of the walls, the green of the leather chairs, and the yellow of the fireplace glowed through the glass, a world separate and impossibly far from the black of the clouded sky and the white snow under his feet. He stood, staring, imagining himself in a chair by that fire, warm and full, listening to the men tell stories.

  He tried to hear what they were saying through the window.

  The old man sat with his fingers tented, his brow furrowed while the one with a serious face and muttonchop sideburns was asking something of him. Joe could hear the plaintive tone, but could not make out the words. They looked like the type of people who would feed a starving stranger, even a fugitive slave.

  The sound of laughter shook Joe from his vision. Three men, talking loudly, staggered slowly up the pike. Joe could think of nothing but hiding and slipped away from the highway.

  He reached the shadow of the barn and crept down along its rock foundation, leaning hard on the cemented river stone. He followed it to a wooden door and lifted the iron latch. The hinges creaked and he slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind him. A cow lowed in her disturbed sleep. He stepped toward the sound and fell.

  MARY

  Mary Willis came home to Town Line in May of 1859. She brought with her an Alfred University diploma, a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a bundle of anti-slavery tracts tied neatly with grocer’s string.

  The diploma was one of only twenty-six earned by young ladies in New York State that year. The book was both heavily annotated by Mary and inscribed to her by Mrs. Stowe herself. The tracts she carried down to Snyder’s General Store the next Saturday afternoon and handed out as she recited a debate-society-perfected jeremiad on the peculiar Southern institution of slavery.

  She had lived among the immigrant farmers for all of her life, and should have known that most of them spoke only German and could not read a word in English, but she was encouraged by how quickly her bundle disappeared.

  The farmers spent all their worrying hours focused on rainfall, hoeing, and late frost, and had little concern about the issue that was tearing their adopted nation apart. None refused the paper, though, which would serve as a welcome reprieve from the dwindling supply of dried corn husks piled in the corner of their outhouses.

  The next night, Nathan Willis sat down for Sunday dinner with Mary and her younger brother, Leander, and delivered his own diatribe.

  “When I was your age, I went for months without seeing another white man,” he said to Mary, tucking the white linen napkin into his shirt as Katia brought out the roast. “Ten years among the Haudenosaunee. I fought off roaming packs of wolves and once I killed a bear that rammed down the cabin door in the middle of the night. It was so cold in ’16 that it snowed in July, and we all nearly starved to death. Poor old Arch Frick had to sell off his own son. The Willises have fought and we have built great things. And despite all that, I find myself embarrassed to walk into the very town I founded. And why? Because the pastor spent his entire sermon this morning condemning my daughter for her uppity, unladylike ways.”

  Leander, who suffered his father’s ire nearly every evening, sat across the table from Mary hanging his head in silence. When she noticed that behind his respectful posture, he was grinning, she had to bite her cheek to stop herself from giggling. As always, her brother brought out the child in her.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” her father said, ignoring his children’s antics. “I have no truck with this dealing of human flesh, and when Millard Fillmore was still president, I told him to his face that he set this country on the road to perdition with that Fugitive Slave Act of his. But there’s a time and place for politics, and the street corner on a Saturday afternoon is not it. I’ll not have you harassing these poor farmers anymore.”

  There was a long silence as Nathan cut the roast. Mary purse
d her lips as she accepted the plate her father handed her.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Mary said, finally. “I saw a governess position advertised in Harper’s. Maybe I could apply.”

  Nathan scowled.

  “Must we discuss this again?” he asked. “You were away long enough. There’s plenty for you to do here, or at least there is until your brother starts acting like a young gentleman and gets to work.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Leander said. “Don’t bring me into this.”

  Mary landed the toe of her shoe into his shin and he yipped in pain, while she pinched her lips closed to keep from giggling.

  Her father cocked his head toward her, and the urge to giggle disappeared.

  “Find something here to occupy that fine mind of yours,” he said. “You’ll stay here and be the lady of the house.”

  Mary had always known the term “lady” came with more constraints than privileges. When she and her father sat with the evening paper, she would often read aloud stories of coddled women with fancy dresses, white gloves, and no practical sense. With derision in her voice, she always lingered over the word when she inevitably encountered it.

  “It will take more than you requiring my presence here to turn me into the lady of anything,” she said.

  That summer was a good one for the farm. The rain came and the stalks of rye and wheat grew tall, and the sun shone as the ears of grain swelled.

  Her father spent most of his long summer days at his sawmill, leaving his children to navigate their way through the work of the fields. Every few weeks he’d load the wagon full of still-fragrant hardwood lumber and ride the fifteen miles to town. The finest libraries in Buffalo were paneled in Willis oak, and there was always someone waiting on his delivery. He’d check into the American Hotel, where he’d spend the night in his usual room after working through the politics of the day over dinner in the lobby with men he’d known for decades.

  By August, it had become clear that Leander believed his sister’s duties also included the managing of the field crews for the farm. He spent most of his days that summer playing baseball with his friends while she tried to convince hired men twice her size that they were obliged to take orders from the “lady of the house.”

  Her only pleasure that summer were her visits with the Websters at the next farm over. Charles Webster had grown up on his own father’s farm, and had taken it on twenty years earlier when his father passed. Mary had always admired the tidiness and efficiency of the small homestead and the kindness that Charlie showed to the animals in his care. He seldom spoke, and made it clear that he much preferred the company of his livestock to that of most people, but Mary sensed a quiet wisdom in him. She looked forward to the rare moments when his devastating wit surfaced with some deadpan comment.

  His uncle back in Vermont had become concerned for the bachelor farmer, and had arranged for a wife for him. Young Verona had arrived on a canal boat a few summers before. She was a refined and funny woman, perhaps a bit too much for the crudeness of Town Line, but she and Mary became fast friends. She was a sickly woman, and when Doc Pride assigned her to bed rest, as he did often, Charles seemed to welcome the chance to care for her in ways that were easy and straightforward. Still, his sad attempts in the kitchen made Mary wince, and had her carrying meals over to the little farmstead on a nightly basis.

  Verona, in turn, lent Mary books from her shelves, and they spent many evenings discussing the latest from Ralph Waldo Emerson or Elisha Kent Kane.

  It was during one of those conversations that Verona suggested that as soon as harvest was done, Mary should visit her alma mater and inquire about opportunities at the school.

  “Perhaps your father will let you go if you promise to return for the summer.”

  Mary waited until the wheat had been harvested and carted to the gristmill before she wrote to her classics teacher, Mrs. Adams, to ask for an appointment.

  It had been a leaflet from Mrs. Adams that led her to the weekly meetings where Mary’s abolitionist tendencies were nurtured, and it had been in her office that she had met the famous Mrs. Stowe, and had her copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin inscribed.

  In the weeks leading up to the trip, Mary thought often of the conversations she’d been part of at the school and the sense of shared purpose she’d felt with the others. The thought of being among the like-minded again and perhaps finding work at the school had Mary happier than she had been in months as she rode the sixty miles on the train, but when she arrived in the old widow’s office, she found her fidgeting nervously with an old quill and staring out the window. Mary sat across the desk from her for nearly a full minute before the teacher turned her attention to her former pupil.

  “To what do I owe such a pleasure?” she asked. “Did you bring some forgotten assignment?”

  “I wish that were the case,” Mary said. “That there was something I could set my mind to. There’s nothing for me to do back home. I feel my mind is wasting.”

  “You miss school, do you?” the professor asked. Mary could make out dust in the wrinkles of the old woman’s face.

  “I miss having something to think about other than cow dung and buckwheat harvest,” she said. “Are there any positions here? Perhaps I could tutor?”

  Mrs. Adams put down the quill, at last turning her full attention to Mary.

  “You’d grow bored here soon enough,” she said. “You are too much of the world for our little university.”

  “How can you say that?” Mary asked. “I was so happy here.”

  Mrs. Adams cocked her head at the statement.

  “Ah, poor Mary. You are much too young to be confused by nostalgia,” she said, looking over her smudged glasses. “You weren’t really happy here. You always seemed to be wishing to be somewhere else. Professor Riepe used to say that she expected you to dash for the station every time the three-ten train whistle blew.”

  Mary thought of the dour-looking comportment teacher and how she had longed to be anywhere else as she demonstrated the proper use of utensils at tea.

  “I wasn’t like that in all the classes. Not in yours,” she said, looking out the window at the graying sky. “I miss being here. I’d not take it for granted like I did then.”

  Mary fell quiet as she felt something she could not name slipping away from her.

  “I saw you with that exact same look in your eye nearly every day,” her teacher said, interrupting the long silence. “Staring off into the distance. I often wondered where you went in those moments.”

  Mary looked down at her folded hands to avoid looking into her teacher’s eyes.

  “Anywhere,” she said, hoping to hide the quiver in her voice. “Even now I hear the train roll through our rye field each night and imagine the places the people are all going. They all pass me by and I just stay with everyone old and tired, or too cowardly to do anything that makes a difference.”

  Mrs. Adams’s face darkened.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” Mary whispered through a weak smile, realizing she’d just insulted her friend.

  Mrs. Adams followed Mary’s gaze out to the wooded hillside.

  “The woods, they are mesmerizing, aren’t they?” she said. “Especially this time of year. The orange and red of the leaves, the harvested fields.”

  Mary nodded at her pause, but could not hide the sadness in her eyes.

  “You don’t see it, do you?” Mrs. Adams said. “You think you are trapped on your father’s farm, held prisoner by acres and acres of fields. But change is all around. The seeds of revolution are planted in those fields. It’s your job to tend them.”

  Mary stared down at her fidgeting hands.

  “There’s no place for revolution between the house and the barn,” she muttered.

  Mrs. Adams stood and moved around from behind her desk to stand over her.

  “Shame on you,” she said. “Your self-pity is unbecoming of a woman in your position.”

  Mary looked
up, surprised by her tone.

  “Not twenty leagues from here, my friends Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony enrage all the old men of Washington as they fight for our rights as women,” she said, wagging a finger in Mary’s face. “Elizabeth started the movement when they would not admit her to college, and here you are, a degree in your hand, whining of boredom and cow shit. Just a few miles beyond that, Frederick Douglass risks his life with no defense but his voice and a printing press.”

  Mrs. Adams lowered her voice to a dismissive whisper.

  “I will do you the courtesy of not listing the advantages you have enjoyed over Mr. Douglass.”

  Mary dropped her eyes.

  “Are you so wound up in yourself that you do not read the papers?” Mrs. Adams asked. “Did you not see that just yesterday they captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry. He will surely be hanged, and it was not so long ago he sat in that same chair as you, asking for help with his cause. I will admit that I threw what coins I could spare into that wishing well. A pittance, certainly, but it was what I could do. And when they torture him, as those scoundrels most surely will, they will ask him for a list of those that aided him, and then they will come for me.”

  Mary could see that what she had taken as distraction when she first arrived was actually fear, an emotion she’d never imagined in this woman before.

  “I sit in this little office, so close to my own end that I’m surprised each morning when I wake up,” she said. “Old and tired, as you say, and still I fight. And here you are, a quiver of arrows on your back, without the imagination to take up your own bow, and you fret over trains in the night.”

  She turned and faced Mary full-on.

  “Are you waiting for someone to give you permission? Are you waiting for someone to tell you to take a stand? That is not how revolutions work!” she growled. “But if it will help you, then here I am. Get up! March!”

  Mary sat stone still in the ensuing silence until there was nothing more for her to do but rise and leave.

  She had nearly closed the door behind her when Mrs. Adams’s face appeared at the slim opening, a hint of its old kindness returned.