by Murray Pura
Kyle left the huge Bible open on the pulpit and sat down on the chairs behind it reserved for the seminary students.
His face was flushed.
It was as if, Clarissa thought, a storm had swept through the sanctuary and they were left to pick up the pieces, but the landscape had been altered by the winds and floods, and now everything had to be rearranged, and it was all different, almost new.
Slowly, awkwardly, the man who had led the proceedings for the evening came to the pulpit and asked the congregation to stand for a final hymn and a closing prayer.
“Kyle must walk me home,” Clarissa whispered swiftly and fiercely to her mother.
Her mother nodded. “Of course, my dear.”
“Alone.”
“Yes, my dear. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to discuss after a sermon like that.”
“We will.”
“Please be in by eleven. He may join us for some hot cocoa once he accompanies you home.”
“I’m sure he’ll find that agreeable, Mother.”
Her mother smiled. “I’m sure he will. Any young man privileged enough to enjoy your company and good graces would find another ten minutes in your presence agreeable.”
Clarissa did not know what privileges Kyle thought he did or didn’t enjoy when he was in her company. But she knew what privileges she enjoyed. Indeed, demanded. A block from the church, they still had not said a word to one another. But she felt like a steam kettle inside, already on the boil for at least twenty minutes and ready to burst. When he finally turned to her and said, “I’m sorry, Miss Ross, have I disappointed you in some way? Was my sermon not to your liking? I realize I was a bit heated,” she did not let him get any further. The street was deserted, but she pulled him into a nearby alley anyway and grasped the lapels of his winter coat.
“I adored everything you said, sir.” She bit out her words in a fierce voice, tugging on his coat with so much force he almost lost his footing. “I adored it. And I adore you. Yes, I’ve said it, and I’m being forward, but it’s nothing but God’s truth. You’re my lightning storm, sir; you’re my thunder. And I’m the one who is heated, sir. Oh, you may be sure, I am heated beyond my capacity to keep it in, and you shall bear the brunt of it. And it’s your fault, sir. It’s entirely your fault.”
She seized him in both her black-gloved hands and yanked herself into his chest. His arms came around her with an immense force that robbed her of her breath. It didn’t matter.
“You yourself are my oxygen, sir,” she managed to get out, “and you are my light. I cannot make do without either of those things, and I cannot make do without you, sir.”
“But only God is our light and breath,” Kyle protested.
“All right then. First God, then you. Is that theology acceptable to my seminary student and preacher cum laude?”
“It is.”
“Do you wish to discuss it?”
“Here and now?” His face, she was happy to see, was incredulous.
She teased him. “If that is your desire, sir.”
“I … I would rather …”
She grinned. “I feel the same way, sir.”
Clarissa folded herself back against his chest and nestled into his strong arms and squeezed him as tightly as she could, closing her eyes in delight when he squeezed her back and took away her breath again, as well as any measure of resistance her red head might still be harboring against surrendering to his charms. She let him carry her utterly and completely away in her dreams and had no qualms whatsoever about letting him do it.
Christmas Eve
Harrisburg, Dauphin County
Don’t you think you are taking things a bit too quickly with young Mr. Forrester?”
“Too quickly? Mother, aren’t I your impulsive daughter?”
“You’re my only daughter. My only, lonely, impulsive daughter.”
“So then you understand I live my life at twice the rate of forward propulsion of anyone else. At twice the power of steam and locomotion.”
“I do understand that.”
“And as you just said …”
“You’re lonely.”
“Yes I am. Or yes I was. Mr. Forrester has a way of cheering me up.”
“I’m sure he does, my dear. Your father had that way about him at twenty-four too.”
“I just wish he approved of the Railroad.”
“He abhors slavery.”
“But not acting outside the law to abolish it. I wish he thought highly of the Freedom Train. I wish he was proud of what they did. Then I could tell him I was one of their conductors.”
Clarissa stopped her flow of memories and stamped her feet as the cold bit through her coat and boots. She was waiting for a signal from a somewhat dilapidated house on the other side of the railway tracks from where she stood. When she had first located the two-story affair, she had been certain they’d given her the wrong address. But after watching for ten minutes, she had seen the curtains move several times. People were inside. They too were waiting. And when the passengers arrived, they would let Clarissa know.
But how would she get them north from Harrisburg and farther along toward the Lake Erie crossing into Canada? She had been asked to go by locomotive from Gettysburg to Harrisburg because all the regular conductors were afraid of being compromised, there were so many slave catchers out and about. Everyone knew something big was up, so there were Southern spies throughout Harrisburg, believing they might have a chance to nab Moses, Harriet Tubman. Clarissa was such an unknown in Harrisburg that no one was looking for her when she got off the train and no one followed her. For that she was grateful.
What she was not grateful for was missing her Christmas Eve with Kyle Forrester. They had planned to sit together at the church service with her parents, have another one of their famous long, slow—and ultimately passionate and dramatic—walks back to her house for coffee and cocoa. Then they were going to open presents with her mother and father. It was going to be marvelous. Her mind and body tingled with anticipation Monday morning when she woke up and thought about how pleasant the evening was going to be. But then the summons had come. She’d just managed to make the Harrisburg train, and now here she was, hidden in the night’s shadows next to an abandoned brick shack, dressed in men’s pants and a man’s long winter coat with a thick woolen toque from Canada pulled down over her head and ears, beginning to shiver, and imagining the stars as sharp, cold knifepoints pricking the skin of her face. This was not how Christmas Eve was supposed to be.
But she was helping men and women and children gain their God-given freedom. She was helping them get to Heaven. Could she honestly be doing anything better on the night Christians celebrated the birth of their Savior? No, no, but … if only Kyle could be standing beside her right now.
“What will you tell him?” she asked her father.
“That you have gone to help out a member of the family who is ill. And so you are.”
“Hardly a member of the family,” she grumbled.
“Not so. We are all part of the family of man, and the slaves are our brothers and sisters, our cousins, our next of kin.”
“Well. What are the three of you going to do without me?”
“Why, have some Christmas cheer and open presents of course.” Her father grinned. “Don’t worry. We’ll save your presents for your return.”
Clarissa made a sour face. “How very kind of you all.”
The curtain moved in one of the windows of the house she was staring at. But the signal was supposed to be the curtains fully opened for half a minute and then pulled tightly together again. So she thrust her mittened hands more deeply into the pockets of her long coat and blew out a lungful of air that turned into a small white cloud. There were other problems that had to be sorted out before the signal came anyway, so there was no point in her being impatient.
She had to move the passengers from Harrisburg to Lewiston, sixty miles farther north, and she had to do it alone. In the dea
d of winter. And find a barn she had never seen before, in a county she had scarcely been in more than twice. She closed her eyes and prayed. It was supposed to be a large group. How would she get them through the woods and across the farm fields on such a bitter night, and over such a distance?
“A wagon, Joshua. Or two wagons. Military wagons. Even slave catchers who have a bone in their teeth won’t dare stop and search those.”
Clarissa whipped her head around.
A tall man in a black hood was at her elbow.
Inwardly, she groaned. Liberty.
Outwardly, she snapped. “What do you mean by sneaking up on me like that? If I’d had a pistol, I’d have shot you. Next time, believe me, I will have a pistol and I will shoot you.”
“Merry Christmas to you, Joshua, and may God be with you in the new year.”
Clarissa had more to say but ended her retort immediately. She looked down at the toes of her boots, toes covered in snow. “Merry Christmas, sir,” she replied.
“It’s my understanding our Christmas present here is similar to the Twelve Days of Christmas, Joshua, similar in that we have twelve pipers piping.”
Clarissa’s dark eyebrows came together. “What?”
“I’m used to being cryptic so often I can’t cease from being cryptic, it seems. There are eleven passengers and one conductor.”
“Twelve. And with you and I that makes fourteen. It’s too big a group to move safely, sir. Especially with so many slave catchers skulking around Harrisburg with their blood up.”
“Hence the wagons.”
“We’d need uniforms to make that trick work.”
“I have them.”
“I’m a woman, sir.”
“But you don’t look like a woman. So I think we shall be all right.”
Blood and heat rose up in Clarissa. “I don’t look like a woman? Is that what you think, sir?”
Liberty shrugged. “I’ve only ever seen you dress like a very old man.”
She knew her eyes were on fire for they felt as if they were burning holes through her skull. “I can’t stand you.”
“But you will have to put up with me, Clarissa Avery Ross, for I am the only person you can rely on tonight.”
“Don’t you dare use my real name.” She felt like flames were leaping out from under her toque. “Don’t you dare.”
“There is the signal.”
The curtains had been opened.
“We must move swiftly,” hissed Liberty, as he began to dart across the railway tracks in a crouch.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Clarissa ran after him. “Even if you were Harriet Tubman, I wouldn’t let you tell me what to do.”
“As a matter of fact.”
“As a matter of fact? What is a matter of fact? Am I to imagine you are Moses disguised as a vulgar lout named Liberty?”
They came in through the back door of the house.
A small black woman in clothes equally as manlike as Clarissa’s pointed a Navy Six revolver at them.
“Tell me!” she demanded in a harsh whisper. “Hurry up and tell me!”
Clarissa’s mind went blank.
But Liberty responded swiftly and smoothly: “‘I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees and I felt like I was in heaven.’” He grinned. “Your own words coming back to you, Moses. Your own words about how it felt to be finally free of the curse of slavery.”
“Liberty.” The small black woman could not suppress her smile. “Liberty.” She lowered her pistol. “Come here.”
She hardly reached up to his chest, but she gave him a fierce hug. “It’s been too long.”
He hugged her back. “It has been. But this is a wonderful way to spend Christmas.”
“It is. And who is this man with you?”
“Uh … this is Joshua.”
“Joshua. A good name for a liberator.”
“It’s … well … it is … for me … it is an honor to meet you, Moses,” stumbled Clarissa.
Moses laughed. “Good Lord Almighty. Another woman just like me looking like an old man dressed up in a potato sack. How old be you, girl?”
“I’m … I’m nineteen, Moses, ma’am.”
“Well, well, and I weren’t a whole lot older than you when I started working on the Railroad. I’m glad you’re here, Joshua.”
“Thank you, Moses, ma’am. There’s no other place I’d rather be tonight.”
“Is that a fact? Well, I can think of a hundred places I’d rather be than cold as an ice floe in Pennsylvania, Joshua. But since we are helping these children find a freedom God granted them, but which others have stolen away, I would agree with you that there ain’t a better place than right here and right now for us all to be. Come and meet the passengers I have guided north from Philadelphia.”
They were huddled at the front of the house. All eleven of them. A smiling woman was passing out chunks of bread and cheese to them, and a small bent man followed pouring milk into wooden cups.
“But they are all children.” Clarissa was almost speechless. “Moses, you brought them here from Philadelphia?”
“I did.”
“Where … where are their parents?”
“Dead. Caught. Chained. Whipped.” Moses looked grimly at the eleven faces as they gazed up at her while they wolfed down their food and drink. “We been here only fifteen minutes. And we need to give them another fifteen to rest up and warm up.”
The woman passing out the bread and cheese glanced toward Moses with an unhappy darkness in her eyes. “We dare not risk a fire.”
Moses nodded. “I know that.”
“The wrong people might see the smoke from the chimney and grow suspicious-like. It is midnight.”
Moses nodded again. “Cold milk an’ cheese an’ bread are delicacies for them. We much appreciate your help and shelter.” Moses turned to Liberty and Clarissa. “What is your plan?”
“I have two commissary wagons,” answered Liberty. “They’re covered. I’ll handle one and Joshua the other. We’ll split the group into two.”
“Hmm. I’d best ride in the back with your group, Liberty, as most men strike fear in these children’s hearts, especially hooded ones. Joshua, I’d be obliged if you’d remove your hat and scarf so the children can see your face.”
Clarissa hesitated. “So the children can see my …”
“They need to know you’re a woman.”
Reluctantly, Clarissa tugged off her toque. Her long scarlet hair tumbled over the shoulders of her dark blue coat. Just as reluctantly, she unwound her scarf, and her young freckled face popped out for all to see. Two of the children laughed and clapped their hands.
“My, my, Liberty,” said Moses, “don’t you have a redheaded beauty on your hands?”
“It appears so.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
“Give her the reins to a team of four horses.”
“You think she can handle them?”
“I have high hopes.”
“I can handle sixteen horses if that’s what you have in mind, sir,” Clarissa practically growled. “I can handle anything.”
Moses arched her eyebrows and laughed. “My, my. We have a hot fire in the stove.”
“I expect you do, ma’am.” Clarissa had decided to mind her manners once she realized she was in the company of Harriet Tubman, but Liberty always managed to find some way to gall her, and she found she could not bite her tongue. Her eyes spat fire and sparks at him. “I’m not yours to manage or mismanage, sir, so unless you have direct orders for me, which I will most certainly obey for the sake of the children, I’ll thank you to keep any thoughts or opinions about me, and what you think I can or can’t handle, to yourself.”
Clarissa saw him shrug.
“I didn’t say you were beautiful, did I?” he replied.
“Ohhhh.” Moses placed her hands on her hips. “Maybe you
gone all blind under that black hood of yours, Liberty.”
“She’s an operator on the Railroad. A conductor. That’s all I require her to be. Her looks make no difference to me one way or the other.”
“Believe me, sir, I’m most heartily glad to hear that.” Clarissa snipped out the words. “In fact, I thank God.”
“The wagons are in a large shed five minutes from here,” Liberty told Moses. “When the passengers are rested, we’ll make our way to them and get rolling. It will take the night to travel the distance.”
Moses nodded. “Let’s be moving.”
They had no trouble getting to the shed. Clarissa would not speak to Liberty, just helped six of the children into the back of the second wagon. It had woolen blankets and heaps of straw. Then she climbed into the driver’s seat.
Liberty opened the shed doors wide, looking about to be sure they remained alone. He came to Clarissa’s wagon. She continued to stare straight ahead.
“Follow me,” he told her. “We’re heading to a farm where they will put us up during the day and feed us.”
She nodded.
He handed her a flour sack that bulged with a blue uniform. “Put the pants and coat on over what you’re wearing. And cover your face up again.”
She took the sack.
“If we get stopped, I’ll do the talking,” Liberty went on. “You’re Corporal Hackett.”
Clarissa nodded a second time.
“Good luck,” he said.
“I don’t need luck,” she responded in a voice colder than the night.
“Well, whatever you need, Joshua, I hope you get it.”
“Sir, I already have it.”
Liberty, clothed in army blue, nudged his team out of the shed and urged it along the road. Clarissa, also dressed in soldier blue, flicked the reins of her four horses and followed closely behind. For a brief moment, she poked her head through the opening of the cover as the wagon rolled forward, smiling at the children and telling them everything was going to be fine—“Wrap yourselves in those blankets and snuggle down in that straw.” Then she closed the front opening as tightly as the back and kept her commissary wagon moving about fifty feet from the rear of Liberty’s.