The Safe Room

by B. A. Shapiro

  “To help insure it is a free state when it enters the union. Just as you told me so many others of us are doing,” I reminded him.

  “Harumph,” he grumbled. “And just who is this young man who wishes to take my daughter from all she knows and loves so she may join him on a dangerous journey into the wilderness? I dare say, I didn’t suspect Wendell Parker would have the gumption. “

  “It isn’t Wendell Parker.” I raised my chin and met his eye.

  “Not Wendell Parker? Who then?”

  “It is Silas.”

  “Silas?” he repeated, and it was clear he had no idea of whom I spoke.

  “Silas Person.”

  His eyes opened wide. “The slave?” he whispered. “You wish to marry a slave?”

  “He’s not a slave,” I corrected my father, perhaps for the first time in my life. “He is a man—a man whose ancestors were taken from their homeland and made into slaves—and although it is of no matter to me, only one of his grandparents was a slave. The other three were free—and white.”

  “It’s impossible,” Papa said. “I shall not allow it. Ever.”

  “But Papa—”

  “Never!” he roared. “Now leave me and speak of it no more.”

  But I stood my ground. “I cannot and I shall not.”

  “You shall do as I say!”

  “I love him, and he loves me.”

  “Silence!”

  “I am with child,” I told him softly.

  Papa stared at me blankly, obviously unable to comprehend my words. I said nothing, but could feel the heat of embarrassment rising up my cheeks as understanding finally dawned in his eyes. He bolted from his chair with the bellow of an enraged bull, knocking the account book over in his agitation. I tried to stand tall before his fury, but my knees betrayed me, and I sank to the carpet.

  I hesitate here, as the pain of relating what happened next is so great. At the time, I believed the events of that afternoon were the worst I would ever experience. Of course, now I know they were just the beginning.

  As I lay huddled on floor of the west parlor, Papa’s shadow towering over me, his anger surrounding me, I hid my face in my hands. But I hid from no one. Papa grasped me by the shoulders and yanked me erect. He held me more roughly than he had ever done before, and my legs dangled uselessly above the floor. He shook me and said horrible things, but nothing as horrible as when I told him it was indeed Silas who was the father of my child. His face became red and mottled, as if he were suffering from apoplexy. He could barely speak. He sputtered and coughed and shook me even harder. “You are carrying a Negro child?” he hissed. I tried to explain that my baby was seven-eighths white, but he would hear none of it. “A Harden the progeny of a colored man?” he cried. “May God have mercy on your soul!”

  I thought for a moment he might strangle me, but then he let go of my shoulders, and I fell back into a heap on the carpet. Papa turned to the fireplace and tore his rifle from where it hung over the mantle. I watched in horror as he ripped open a paper packet of gunpowder with his teeth and began to load the musket.

  “Don’t!” I howled, throwing my arms around his legs. “Don’t!”

  Papa ignored me, pushing the bullet home with his thumb and drawing the ramrod. For a moment, I lay stunned, dumbfounded and unable to move. But I had to move, I had to warn Silas. As Papa pulled back the hammer and marched toward the cellar, I hauled myself up and stumbled after him. I tripped on the edge of the carpet, fell again.

  I was just entering the dining room when a single rifle shot shook the house. It seemed as though I felt the blast before I heard it, and I grasped onto the chair rail. “No!” I screamed. Maybe Papa was just trying to scare Silas, I prayed as I raced down the stairs. Maybe he had missed.

  When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw my worst fears had been realized. Silas lay on the ground, his blood darkening the dirt around him. Silas had a huge hole in his chest, and his shirt was blown to shreds. I could see he was gravely wounded. I knelt down and took his hand. It was icy cold.

  “Sarah,” Silas said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Sarah, please help my brothers.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I think I was more surprised by my impulse than Michael, but we seemed to be enjoying the kiss equally. I hadn’t kissed a man in two years, and it was better than I remembered. As the kiss deepened, the warm sensation in my center swelled into a wanting as ancient as life itself. I told Michael it was a dangerous thing to be the one to release two years of pent-up desire, but he didn’t seem too concerned. He laughed and kissed me again.

  I felt giddy and carefree; all the concerns that had been crowding me for the past week drifted away, became elusive, formless, unimportant. I was only aware of this man, of his arms and his lips and the way the palm of his hand was pressed against the small of my back. I only cared about the desire that overwhelmed me, about the desire I could feel overwhelming him. I arched my body closer to his and imagined leading him upstairs to my bedroom, undressing him, letting him undress me … I pulled away.

  Michael looked at me with a puzzled expression.

  “Need more time,” I managed to gasp. “Can we take this a little bit slower?”

  He ran his finger along the line between my ear and my chin, leaving a trail of tiny shocks in its wake. “As long as we take it somewhere.”

  I tried to still my ragged breathing and surprised myself by saying, “How about dinner tomorrow?” That wasn’t very slow.

  “You cooking?”

  I shook my head. “Cooking’s not my thing, but I’ll treat.” I stood before I could change my mind, and he reluctantly followed my lead. We walked together to the door, but I leaned away from him when we reached it.

  “I’ve got a bunch of books on slavery at home,” Michael said calmly, as if no kiss and no images of lust and nakedness had passed between us. He nodded in the direction of the small sack on the couch. “I’ll see if I can come up with anything else on charm bags before tomorrow night.”

  Charm bags, I thought stupidly. Tomorrow night. “Sure,” I finally said, when it became clear he was waiting for an answer. “Sure,” I said again.

  Michael kissed me lightly on the end of my nose and told me he’d see me about six. Then he slipped out the door.

  I watched from the window as his truck pulled out of the driveway. When the red taillights disappeared from sight, I dropped into the couch. “So, how do you like that, Gram?” I asked out loud. If Gram were here now, she’d pour us each a big glass of milk, and we’d polish off the remains of that chocolate cake, debating how slowly I really wanted to go. “Just because Michael’s good-looking and it didn’t work out with Richie, that doesn’t mean it won’t work out with him,” Gram would say. “Life’s short. Take a chance.” Maybe I’d even drink some of the milk, just to make her happy.

  I picked up the charm bag laying on the couch next to me. It was too bad Gram wasn’t here to see this. She’d have been thrilled by the notion that it had belonged to a slave who had been “riding” the Underground Railroad, perhaps one who had been sheltered under the eaves of Harden House.

  Gram had told me that no one knew for certain why the network of safe houses was called the Underground Railroad, but one story was that in the early 1830’s, the owner of an escaped slave was overheard to say, “Those damn abolitionists must have a railroad by which they run off the coloreds.” Whatever the truth, the railroad analogy had stuck, with “conductors” as those who helped the slaves “ride” from one “station” to another. Harden House had been a link of this chain, the Colonel, one of the “damn abolitionists.” It was a family history to be proud of, and it bothered me to think that a tragedy might have taken place here. Could an anti-abolitionist band have raided Harden House and discovered a slave hiding in the cellar? Could one of them have shot the runaway, who then bled to death on the dirt floor, calling out to Sarah Harden with his last breath?

  I pressed the charm bag between my hands.
What must it have been like to be a slave? To never be able to call your life your own? To believe only the plantation sorcerer and a small sack could protect you from the evil that surrounded you? Michael had been so understanding when I told him about my dreams and my irrational fear of ghosts and what might have transpired at Harden House one hundred fifty years ago. “Dreaming it doesn’t mean it’s true,” he had said, “it just means you’re worried about it.” But why should I be worried? What would make me think a slave had been killed in the cellar? The only answer was that I had already known. Gram must have told me the story when I was a young girl, and I had forgotten—or my conscious mind had forgotten, but my subconscious had not.

  Sitting quietly on the couch, pressing the charm bag between my hands, with only the creaking of the old house for company, my thoughts finally began to slow. My breathing followed, then my eyelids closed.

  I dreamed I was sitting on the couch, pressing the charm bag between my hands. I was alone, but not afraid. It was peaceful, comforting, to sit there, lost in a web of conjecture, contemplating the impossible. Gram drifted in and told me what a nice boy Michael was and reminded me I had forgotten to pick up my navy suit from the cleaners. Then Linda Lubin, a childhood friend I hadn’t seen since she moved to California after high school, walked into the kitchen. She was wearing the maroon prom dress with the slit up the leg that we had thought was so daring. “You’ve always been a risk taker,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she thought this was a good or bad thing.

  I opened my hands and the charm bag rested in my right palm. I cupped it protectively, and it began to stir in my fingers. At first I was only marginally interested as the sack twitched slightly and lay still. But then the bag leapt from my grasp, jumping up and out as if snatched by an invisible hand. I shouted as the red sack flew across the kitchen and through the dining room doorway. Then I froze. He was back. The man with the shovel. The man with the hole blasted through his chest. He was dead. He was back.

  Sweat rolled down my neck, and I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or awake. I jumped up and went to the refrigerator, grasped the metal door handle in my hands, pressed my cheek to its smooth coldness. I was awake. I was standing in the kitchen. A dead slave had returned to the living. He wanted to reclaim what was his. He wanted his charm bag. The ghost of my dreams. He was real and he was here.

  I streaked through the house and yanked open the front door, thrusting myself into the night, out and away from all that scared me, all that I couldn’t understand. I ran right into the arms of Raymond Langley. Behind him was Detective Blais.

  “Whoa!” Langley said, catching me as I tripped over his shoe. “Whoa.”

  Blais raised an eyebrow. “Is everything all right?” she asked. “Are you feeling unwell?”

  But I didn’t care what she asked or even that she had used the pretentious word “unwell.” I was just happy to see them. To see anyone. To be with people. Living people. Even if one was Detective Blais. I took a shuddering breath and leaned heavily against Langley’s arm, as much for the physical support as for the brush with reality the contact offered. “Fine,” I finally managed to answer. “I’m just fine.”

  Langley looked dubious, but Blais said, “We’d like to talk with you.”

  “Sure,” I agreed readily. Talking was fine. Anything was fine as long as they didn’t leave. Nothing could be worse than being alone in the house. If I had been alone in the house.

  “How about we go inside?” Blais suggested.

  “It’s such a nice night,” I said quickly, not ready to go back, even with two detectives by my side. “Why don’t we just sit out here?” I looked around the yard. It was dark and getting chilly, and there was nowhere to sit except for the front stoop, which was a single slab of slate, about three feet wide and two feet deep, barely large enough to hold one person. Never three.

  Langley glanced at the stoop and then back at me. “I think we might be more comfortable in the house,” he said reasonably.

  The shadow of the house fell over me as the moon rose behind it. The two-story facade seemed taller than usual, longer and flatter and somehow more ominous. “There are no lights,” I said, as if this made it all make sense. I had fallen asleep on the couch while it was still dusk, and night had come while I dreamed. “It’s dark in there.”

  “We could turn the lights on,” Blais suggested in the soft tones one uses with slow and skittish children.

  Langley cleared his throat, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Is, ah, is there some reason you don’t want us to go into your house, Ms. Seymour?”

  “You can call me Lee,” I offered, although I had extended this privilege when we first met, and he had obviously chosen to decline it.

  “Is there some reason you don’t want us to go into your house, Lee?” Blais asked.

  “No,” I said quickly. “No, of course not. It’s, it’s just that I lost something—a charm bag. It’s a sack, actually.” I held my forefingers about three inches apart. “A small sack that slaves wore around their necks for protection against evil.” I knew I wasn’t making any sense, but I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t tell them why I didn’t want to go back into the house—I couldn’t tell them I was afraid of a ghost who had snatched his charm bag from my hand—but I had to tell them something. “I was looking for the bag when you got here. I can’t find it anywhere.”

  Langley took a small step backward. “You don’t want us to go inside because you lost your charm bag?”

  It was clear I had no choice. I consoled myself with the fact that I wasn’t going to have to go back into the house alone, that I was accompanied by two armed police officers. “Shall we?” I asked with a false heartiness that fooled no one. “I’ll just turn some lights on.”

  “You do that,” Blais said as she pushed the front door open.

  When we got into the house, I was even jumpier than I had been when we were outside. I walked through the downstairs rooms, turning on all the lights and jabbering about safe houses and slaves and the Underground Railroad. I kept throwing furtive glances into the corners and under the furniture. Langley and Blais trailed behind me, not saying much but watching me closely. When we reached the kitchen, I offered them coffee or tea or soda or water or anything else that they might like to drink or even eat.

  “I still have all these leftovers from the funeral—casseroles and lasagna and such—lots of cookies. People bring way too much food to these things. Some kind of offering to the dead, I guess. I don’t know exactly who they think will eat it all. Please,” I begged, not at all sure why, “can’t I please give you something?” I looked over at the couch, at the cartons. No charm bag.

  “We’re fine,” Langley said. “We just want to ask you a couple of things.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure. I’ll be happy to talk. Just sit down here.” I pointed to the couch in the kitchen. When Langley started to sit, I changed my mind. “No,” I said. “Not there. It’s too cramped. All these cartons and things. Not enough space for us to sit comfortably. How about the east parlor? Or the west—that was Gram’s favorite room.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Blais asked again.

  “Fine,” I said as I led them into the west parlor. “Fine,” I repeated as I waved them into the wing chairs in front of Gram’s desk. As fine as anyone could be who had just had an object snatched from their hands by a ghost.

  Langley waited until I was seated, then cleared his throat and explained what it was they wanted to know. They had come to ascertain if I had a computer in the house (I didn’t), if I had access to cocaine (I didn’t), if Trina had access to cocaine (I didn’t know), if I had ever seen Trina with cocaine (I hadn’t), and if Trina had ever offered me cocaine (she hadn’t). I didn’t understand their interest in cocaine, but knew it didn’t bode well for Trina.

  “Would you mind if we took a look in the cellar?” Langley asked before I could get any information on the cocaine.

  “The cellar?” I rememb
ered Kiah’s protective stance at SafeHaven, Trina’s assertion that the police didn’t need evidence to make an accusation real. Could someone have really killed Gram? Did they think it was Trina? Or me? Maybe I should do as Kiah had suggested and call her friend, Mike Dannow, supposedly the best defense attorney in the state.

  “Ms. Seymour?” Blais asked. “It may be a crime scene.”

  “No. No, I don’t think so,” I said, then thought better of what might be construed as unwillingness to cooperate with the police or perhaps even obstruction of justice. “That is, unless you have a search warrant?”

  “Unfortunately we don’t,” Blais said. “We’d hoped you’d be more cooperative. But there won’t be any problem arranging it. It usually takes a day or two, but we got one quicker for your computer at work. We’ll have someone at your office first thing tomorrow to make a copy of the hard disk. We’ll probably be able to get someone here with a warrant to check the cellar the next day.”

  “Warrant,” I said stupidly. “Check the cellar.” Somehow a search warrant for the house seemed much more ominous than one for SafeHaven. Mike Dannow would know how concerned I should be. “Why all the questions before about cocaine?”

  “The preliminary lab report indicates that there might have been cocaine in your grandmother’s body.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Gram wouldn’t have done cocaine.”

  “We assumed that,” Blais said, a bit smugly. “We’re guessing someone gave it to her without her knowledge.”

  “Someone like Trina Collins?” I asked.

  “The lab is running more sensitive tests to be certain,” Blais continued smoothly, ignoring my sarcasm. “But we also talked with your grandmother’s doctor, Larry Starr, and he said she was taking Inderal, a beta blocker for her heart.”

  “So?”

  “It turns out that an overdose of that is another possibility. Or there’s always the chance of a false positive.”

  “What about natural causes?”

  “A possibility too.”