The Hidden Light of Northern Fires

by Daren Wang

  And that left her completely alone.

  She’d gotten a letter from Charlie the week before, and it reminded her of all those she’d lost in the previous months.

  She missed the ease and the calm that he always seemed to bring into any room.

  She missed her evenings in the cellar talking with Joe as he ate. She had sent dozens of letters and called on her father’s friends trying to find a way to free him from the jail, but none had offered help.

  There were even moments, fleeting times when his betrayals slipped away from her, when she missed her brother.

  And then there was Hans. She liked to picture him laughing at one of Leander’s jokes.

  Somehow, she’d thought these people would always be here, and that even if she went away, she would be able to come back to a place frozen in time. Instead, she found herself frozen there, and alone.

  She screamed her rage into the leafless trees again, but the sound was deadened by the thick blanket of snow, and all that answered her was cold silence.

  She dropped her bare hands into the thick snow and stared down at the untouched white, the only sound her own breath.

  And in the blank whiteness, she saw Joe’s face, and she closed her eyes.

  The numbing cold made her hands ache, but she stayed there, on her hands and knees, thinking of him, of how abandoned he must feel in that dark place. And how good it would be to have him back there with her.

  She sat back, kneeling in the snow, and stared into the blue sky overhead. A cardinal, brilliant red against the snow, hopped down from a high branch to peck at a fallen pinecone, just feet from her.

  She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, and it cocked its head at her and chirped its song. She nodded to it, and it took flight.

  Mary stood then, and stared at the faint mark the bird had left. She brushed the caked snow from her knees, pulled her hair into place, straightened her back, and turned back to the house, knowing her way forward for the first time in months.

  HOLE

  Richmond’s Daily Dispatch, February 4, 1862

  THE UNION FRACTURES

  A deserter from the Union Army of Western New York reports that the fault lines of the Union have been aggravated by recent defeats, and the disintegration of the North is imminent. Late last year, in the first of what we expect to be many, the city of Town Line, New York, threw off the tyrant’s shackles and declared itself an independent and sovereign state.

  “We are our own state, with no allegiances beyond our borders,” wrote Alois Zubrich, Sr., the local pastor and newly elected president. “Union Blues or Confederate Grays are assured safe passage within our borders, as long as they abide by the laws of Christ.”

  Even now towns throughout the North are considering similar breaks from the tyrant.

  Rest assured, loyal sons of Dixie, our cause is just, and there are freedom-lovers, even in the furthermost reaches of the Union that rally to us.

  When Joe slept, he dreamed of Mary. He tried not to. When he lay down, he would try to think of Alaura or his mother, but Mary would come to him anyway. He dreamed of a little cabin in the woods. She would cook while he fixed the roof, climbing the ladder with both his legs.

  There would be whole days in some of the dreams, and they would work together in the day and eat together in the evening and then they would go inside as the light faded. The details were burned into him. The way she danced by the sugar fire, the sidelong glances she sent his way as she shared her whiskey, even the sadness in her eyes whenever she spoke of her mother. Then that sound would come back to him. The wail she made as her father fell to the ground. It rang in his ears, jolting him awake.

  In the dark he could hear madmen talking to themselves and petty thieves planning some elaborate and ill-fated scheme. There were lost souls, too, telling of each regret that led them to that place. The murmur permeated the night, making real sleep impossible.

  They’d taken his peg, but no one had thought to search him for money. When the morning light came through the barred window, he would take out one of the coins she had given him and look at the profile of Liberty struck in gold.

  During the day, his mind would drift to the books she’d lent him. His thoughts would slide to the one where the man was walled up in a dungeon, but again and again he turned back to the little hut by the pond.

  The only way for Joe to mark the days was Kemuel, the white-haired black man that brought him his food and cleared the slop bucket. Nonsense words streamed from him like water through a millrace. There were stories about his cat and lists of groceries or people, but sometimes there was news, too, stories of armies amassing in this place or that.

  “Hey, Pegleg,” Kemuel said to him after he’d been there for a couple weeks. “You training to be a statue or something? You ain’t moved an inch since you got here. You a runaway?”

  Joe nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Joe,” he replied.

  “Joe what?” Kemuel demanded.

  “Just Joe.”

  “Who’s your owner man?” he asked.

  “Old Mr. Bell, I guess,” Joe said.

  “Well, if that’s his name, then that’s your name. Bell. Joe Bell. That’s what they’ll call you when they round us up. That’s what I hear they gonna do. Round us all up and send us back down South. Just to stop the war. Hell, I was born in Philadelphia, but they’re gonna send me south anyway.”

  “They can’t do that to you,” Joe said.

  “You ask the Cherokee about what they can do,” Kemuel said.

  A couple days passed before he said anything directly to Joe again.

  “You still here? Usually they ship a runaway out by now. I guess this war has everything gummed up.”

  “Can you bring me something from the outside if I pay you for it?” Joe asked.

  “I ain’t bringing you no hooch,” Kemuel said, suspicion in his eyes. “You just trying to get old Kemuel in trouble.”

  “No, nothing like that,” Joe said. “Just some paper and pencils. I’ll give you a dollar for them.”

  “A dollar for pencil and papers?” Kemuel scowled. “What are you going to do with that?”

  “There’s some letters I want to write,” Joe said.

  “You probably want me to mail them, too,” Kemuel said.

  “No,” Joe said. “Most of the people I want to write to are dead. I just want to write it down.”

  “I never seen one negro man in this hole knew how to write,” Kemuel said. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’ve got a dollar. Gold,” Joe said. “Bring me twenty cents’ worth of paper and five pencils, and you can keep the rest.”

  Joe held up one of the gold coins and Kemuel reached for it, but Joe made a fist around it and held it tight.

  “You bring me paper first,” Joe said.

  Kemuel scratched his chin and rubbed his hand under his nose.

  “I don’t suppose no one will care much about those kinda things,” he said.

  For three days, the caretaker acted like he’d never had the conversation, talking of nothing but the slaughter at Bull Run. On the fourth day he brought a bundle of blank pages wrapped in butcher paper and twine, along with a handful of pencils.

  When Joe gave him the coin, Kemuel bit it hard and then grinned.

  “You need those pencils sharpened, you let me know. I’ll take them outside and give them a whittle for you.”

  His started his letter to his sister warning her that it was hard in the North, maybe harder than back home. But then he wrote to her about Mary, and how this woman had fought for him, and he told her that maybe, somehow, she could find a friend like her, and that even in the worst times, that would make a difference.

  He wrote to her of the walks they used to take around the plantation. He thanked her for the things she had brought him from the kitchen when she could. Sweets and sometimes fruit and cheese and meat that the master had left on his plate. He wrote about how
she used to cry when they heard the hounds baying after some runaway, and he hoped that she hadn’t cried too much when they were after him.

  The next letter he wrote was to his mother, now dead fifteen years. He told her of life on the plantation after she’d gone, and how proud she would be to see Alaura.

  He wrote to Nathan Willis and told him he was sorry for the trouble he’d caused. He even wrote to Yates Bell and told him how he was glad he didn’t die. He wrote a letter to Charles Webster and thanked him for helping Mary.

  Then he wrote to Mary, and filled six pages.

  The next day he wrote to her again.

  After a few days, he took another coin from the rag he’d hidden in his waistband and sent Kemuel for more paper.

  The work made him tired in a different way. By the time the daylight would fade from his window, his shoulders and back were so stiff that he could barely move. The caretaker allowed him to keep his tray and he used it for a lap desk, and things got a little better.

  At first, he told her of his escape from Walnut Grove, the path through the mountains and rivers. Then he wrote of the good days he’d had with his mother and sister on the plantation, of the fine spring afternoons when there was food to eat and the sun seemed to make his skin glow with warmth.

  He wrote of the way his mother smiled when her children found a form of hares and stared in wonder at them.

  Sometimes he would start to write the other stories, but he would only write a word or two, then stop himself.

  He’d think of those nights when he was little more than a baby himself, and he wondered if maybe they were just a trick of his memory, something false that just seemed true. They were so long ago, he couldn’t be sure.

  He was certain of some things. The good things.

  He could remember the old master bouncing him on his knee in the cool of the evening, laughing as Joe fingered his gold watch.

  And he could remember the old man giving his mother the Bible that she would use to teach him to read.

  Those he knew. He remembered the smell of the old master’s breath, the tobacco and whiskey, and the neat, clipped line of the old man’s white mustache as he held the watch aloft for Joe to play with.

  He wondered how things were for Alaura back at Walnut Grove, whether she’d been punished for him running off, and whether things were worse or better for her and the rest now that the war had come.

  He’d get lost in worry for her, staring at the cell wall, his eyes twisting the patterns of the rough brick into faces in pain.

  He found ways to exercise in the tiny cell, pushing himself off the stone floor or hoping on his foot, just so he could feel motion.

  The days got shorter, and the wind that came in through the barred window got colder.

  He wrote about the books Mary had lent him, and he remembered books she had said he should read but that she didn’t own. He wrote a title on a scrap and sent Kemuel out with another gold coin.

  When he couldn’t think of anything else to tell Mary, he wrote about the jail keeper’s ramblings, telling of the cat’s adventures and what he needed to buy at the market that day.

  “The man in the bookstore laughed when I showed him this name,” Kemuel said, holding up a thin brown volume. “What is it about?”

  Joe smiled, took it from his hand, and opened to the title page.

  “The Last Day of a Condemned Man,” he read. “Victor Hugo.”

  “That’s not really something to laugh about,” Kemuel said.

  “No, no, it’s not,” Joe said.

  Snow seeped in the window that night.

  He spent the short daylight hours exercising or reading and rereading the book, making notes in the margins. He struggled with some of the words at first, but he read them again and again, and they made sense to him soon.

  Before the light faded each evening, he’d write to Mary for a few minutes, and then, after the dark had fallen, he’d finger his one remaining coin, running his fingertip over the woman’s face.

  The nights had gotten so long and the days so short that he’d begged Kemuel for a candle to read by, but the old man wanted to be paid for it and Joe wouldn’t give up his last coin. So he sat for hours before sunrise with his eyes closed, wondering what Mr. Thoreau would be doing then. He was sitting that way when a tall white man appeared at the door to the cell, held up a lantern, and unlocked the door.

  The jailer tossed Joe’s peg onto his cot.

  “Joe Willis,” he said.

  Joe shook his head.

  “That’s not me,” he said.

  “No, it’s you, boy. Let’s go, don’t make me go in that shit hole and get you,” he said, standing outside the cell.

  Joe strapped the peg back on, picked up his bundled papers and his book, and limped out of the cell.

  The guard led him to a concrete room and stripped his filthy clothes from him. The last gold coin fell to the floor and Joe went down on his knee, scrambling for it. The guard heaved a bucketful of water at him and kicked him a cake of soap. Joe covered his eyes with his clutched hands as the rough bristles of a long-handled broom tore at his skin.

  “The judge don’t want you stinking,” the guard said, handing him a tunic and loose pants stitched from burlap. He stumbled through a maze of dark hallways until he was finally pushed into a courtroom.

  He was so dazzled by the morning sun streaming in through the high windows that his knee buckled and the guard had to grab him before he fell. The light painted bright white boxes on the dark wood floor and illuminated a woman where she stood in front of the judge’s bench. She wore a black dress with her hair covered in a lace bonnet. Her face was powdered white and her hair pulled into a severe bun. The courtroom was empty except for her and the judge, who looked down on the woman in consternation.

  “There’s thousands of slaves flooding across the battle lines, and no one knows what to do with any of them,” the judge growled. “They aren’t slaves anymore. The army calls them contraband when they arrive in their camps, but I don’t know what that means. We will not send them back to the enemy, and the police now arrest the hunters on the same streets where the slaves were arrested a year ago. What is your interest in this one?”

  “He is a sawyer,” the woman said.

  At the first word, he knew it was Mary.

  “The army requisitions lumber from us every month, but my father is too ill to run the mill,” she said.

  “You take care of him,” the judge said. “He is a good man.”

  “He is not well, but with God’s mercy…” Mary said. “He cannot run the mill. This man can. He can help the cause.”

  “She says you’re from Virginia,” the judge said, turning to Joe. “What plantation?”

  “Walnut Grove,” Joe said. “Harpers Ferry.”

  “Harpers Ferry? That area has been overrun so many times, there’s nothing there left to fight over.”

  Joe could feel his heart sinking.

  “Alaura,” he whispered to himself.

  “What?” the judge asked.

  “My sister,” Joe said. “I left my sister there.”

  “I hope she’s a fast runner,” the judge said. “Good luck to her. Maybe she’ll end up here.”

  “Is he free?” Mary asked.

  “Take him with you,” the judge said. “I don’t know what to do with him, but we don’t need him in jail for doing last year what hundreds are doing every day now.”

  He motioned to the bailiff.

  “Get him out of here before someone notices.”

  The bailiff pushed him forward and he stumbled into Mary. She offered an arm, helped him back up.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  She kept her head lowered as she took Joe by the arm and rushed him past the empty tables and gallery, through the oak doors, and into the morning. He shielded his eyes from the brilliant sun reflecting on a fresh landscape of snow.

  “Fast, and keep your head down,” she said, pulling at him ha
rd as he stumbled down the snow-dusted marble steps. She kept looking left and right even as she helped him into a waiting cab. They rode to the train station where she rushed him through the terminal and into a car. She continued to scan the platform and the ticket booths, shushing him every time he tried to speak.

  Only when the train jerked into motion and cleared the platform did she turn to him with a broad smile.

  “That wasn’t precisely legal,” she said as the train gained speed. “I wouldn’t want to be there when Kidder catches wind of it.”

  He could not get his voice to work, could not say anything to meet the measure of the moment, but he looked full into her serious, joyful eyes and she did not look away.

  He wanted to take her in his arms, he wanted to throw her in the air and scream at the top of his lungs, but the smattering of other riders were already staring at the odd pairing.

  The train whistle blew as they approached the Cheektowaga station.

  “I thought they were leading me to the gallows,” he said finally.

  “They are barbarians,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me into the jailhouse to see you. I’ve called on every lawyer or judge that owed my father a debt, but none would do me any favors. Finally, I remembered Judge Tolliver. He used to scold me for being an immodest little girl when I wore Leander’s breeches, but he is a Quaker, and sympathetic to the cause.

  “I knew I could appeal to him if I did my best to look like a pious young Quaker lady,” she said, fidgeting with the front of her plain black dress. “Don’t I make a fine-looking widow?”

  “I thought you were a messenger from God when I saw you,” he said.

  She smiled, and through the heavy powder, he made out a sprinkle of girlish freckles on her cheeks that had somehow remained hidden to him until then.

  “Of course, I won’t hold you. You can go over to Canada anytime you want,” she said, looking down and pulling the white gloves from her hands. “But I’ll pay you a decent wage if you stay to work the mill. We get telegrams nearly every day asking for lumber and my father can’t work anymore.”

  “He is alive?” Joe said.

  She nodded, and it seemed the daylight brightened.