by Vicky Saari
William had so many questions for Caleb that after a bit he was beginning to sound like Little Jed. This led Caleb to worrying what might happen if Little Jed should pop over while he had these people staying in his log cabin. He didn’t want a lot of people knowing what was going on. It just wasn’t safe. When they heard a wagon approaching, Caleb didn’t say a word. He just watched as William and his wife withdrew into the cabin and closed the door. Caleb was relieved when he saw that it was Seth.
“I hear you have some guests with sick kids?” quizzed Seth quietly as he alighted from the wagon.
Caleb grinned at his old friend and shook his hand. “You in the market for chicken pox? Those poor little fellers would gladly share them with you.”
“Well, to be honest, I don’t have much of a market for ’em right now, but next week, I may have some suggestions. Think you’ll be okay for another week?” Seth inquired. With these initial pleasantries out of the way, the two men were free to engage in a serious conversation about the course their lives had taken and what the repercussions might be. Caleb called to William and invited him to meet Seth. Seth showed the men the secret compartment in his wagon and told Caleb about his contacts without actually giving any names. Not because he didn’t trust Caleb, but they both agreed that the less knowledge either of them had the safer it was for all. The only thing Caleb learned from Seth was that the town of Salem was the next leg of the journey for any “contraband” that came their way. The use of this term was enough to remind them that there was a $500 fine and space in prison for all of them for aiding and abetting escaped slaves. However, the main problem they were now confronted with was the logistics of transporting an entire family.
“As you can see, my rig is fine for a single person, but for a family of four, I’ll need to make other arrangements,” Seth thought aloud.
In the house, Jessie was busy finishing the stew she had begun before leaving for Abner’s funeral. She had made more than a gallon and had baked two corn pones in the coals of the fireplace. One was to send over to Jed’s for dinner after Abner’s burial, and one was for the family in the cabin. Mittens was to come for Jed’s dinner as soon as the services were over. She prayed Little Jed didn’t follow her. Keeping a secret from him was going to be hard. Young Jessie was to explain to Jed and Zeke what was going on; otherwise, they’d both be here asking questions. If anyone could keep a secret, it was those two, she thought to herself as she ladled stew into a smaller kettle to take to the cabin. She turned the bread out onto a board, cut it into squares, and placed them into a small basket. She pulled out four wooden bowls and put them into another basket to tote to the cabin. She could see Seth, Caleb, and William still talking and was about to step out the door when Mittens arrived in Jed’s wagon driven by Brad. Instinctively, William stepped back into the cabin at the sound of new arrivals, and Jessie turned back into the house with the kettle and basket.
“Ma, Jed thought we might need the wagon to get the food back home. He said he’ll be over later,” Little Jessie said as she and Brad began loading the heavy iron kettle and bread basket into the wagon.
“Ma made some cakes last night to go along with dinner,” Brad added as he jumped back onto the wagon and picked up the reins. “Hope you and Grandpa can join us later.”
“Grandma and I’ll be over shortly,” Caleb interrupted. “Tell your ma to save some cake for me.” As soon as the youngsters drove away, Jessie retrieved her small kettle and basket and started toward the cabin. Fortunately, while Moses had lived there, the place had been outfitted with a makeshift table and stools. They knocked at the door before they entered, and while Caleb arranged the kettle and bowls on the table, Jessie went to Marantha to check on her wounds. She gently swabbed them with ointment again and covered them with clean cloths to prevent infection. She then helped the young woman to her feet and encouraged her and the children to the table, where William had finished dishing up the food. Caleb came in shortly carrying a jar of fresh milk.
The weather was so nice that William, Marantha, and the children all carried their dishes outside to enjoy the sunshine and watched as their hosts walked up the hill to go to their son’s house. It felt strange to sit openly beneath the trees and to eat freely of such fine food. Once again, they talked among themselves about the future of which they had dreamed. Quietly, they joined hands and bowed their heads in prayer.
As Caleb and Jessie approached Jed and Sarah’s house, Little Jed spotted them first and ran to greet them. “Can I spend the night at your house, Gramps?” he asked immediately.
The question caught Caleb off guard, and for a moment, he didn’t know what to say. “We’ll have to talk to your pa and ma,” offered Jessie. “With Abner gone, your ma and pa are gonna need lots of help.”
“I kinda promised Mr. Hodges I’d help him this week, so why don’t we make it a later date?” Caleb suggested as a compromise. “You and I need to do some work on our orchard next week.”
“Jed, you promised to help me in the shop this week,” his pa interrupted. “I gotta get these cupboards crated so Mr. Hodges can take them to Madison next week.”
Caleb looked at his son and marveled at his wisdom. It appeared that Little Jessie had already told him about their guests. “Thanks, son,” he mumbled gratefully.
“I heard you have some visitors,” Jed spoke quietly. “I haven’t said anything to Sarah yet. Zeke’s inside. He hasn’t said anything to Lucy either. Mittens got us alone at the cemetery and told us what was going on while we finished with the burial,” he added as he led his pa to the workshop while Jessie left to join the family inside. He showed his pa the four corner cupboards and the three tin door pie safes he had created. “Dave Bailey made the punched tin for the doors before he left town. Seth had ordered these months ago and said he’d let me know when he needed them. I figure he must have had something like this in mind when he ordered them,” Jed confided to his pa. He then turned his father’s attention to the special crate he was building to help with the shipment. They were interrupted by Zeke, who chose that moment to join them and wanted to know what was so important they couldn’t join the rest of the family. Jed told him that he was in a bit of a hurry, as Seth was coming that evening to load his wagon for a special delivery the next day. Zeke was reminded of the brief message that his sister had told them at the cemetery and knew immediately that he didn’t want to know anymore. It was enough to know that his father-in-law was engaged in such illegal affairs, but now they had dragged his own family into the circle. He turned and went back to the house, where his wife was helping his ma and Sarah lay out the dinner.
*****
“Do you think we ever really had runaway slaves here?” Kayla asked Brad. “Dave says there were.”
Hogarth listened carefully to their conversations. He wished he could tell them about George and about William’s family, but he guessed that some things are better off left unsaid.
Chapter 27
Within a week of their arrival, William and Marantha and their children were recovered and well enough to continue their journey. William had taken a share in the daily chores as a way of trying to help pay the way for his family. Fortunately, young Jessie had pulled her brother, Jed, aside at the cemetery and had suggested that he keep Little Jed home as much as possible that week. Jed needed no reminders. He and Sarah solved the problem by seeing to it that their son was kept busy. One of his first jobs was helping his brother, Brad, clear out the old Parson cabin that Abner had been living in. With three younger siblings in the house, Brad was already chafing at the bit to have his own space. He welcomed the idea of setting up bachelor quarters in the cabin.
Abner had left behind few worldly goods, but Little Jed put great care into preserving as much as he could, and behind every artifact there was a story. These he shared with Brad as they sorted and cleaned and put things away. “You know, General Harrison gave this to
Abner at Tippecanoe,” he said. Then he added, “I think you ought to leave Abner’s gun over the door. Abner always said ‘a man never knows when he’s gonna need his gun,’” Brad half listened to his little brother’s incessant chatter and struggled to push back his irritation. He missed Abner, too. He had never really thought about it, but in some way, Abner’s presence had provided him some kind of connection to the father he had never known. “You’re right, Jed. Abner would want his gun left over the door where he always kept it.”
While Brad kept Little Jed busy, Jed and Seth, with help from Caleb, loaded the cupboards into Seth’s heavy freight wagon. Each was carefully encased in its own special crate and braced with straw to protect the hand-rubbed finishes that Jed had labored over for days and weeks at a time. Each crate was then carefully lashed to the wagon to keep it from shifting during its long, rugged journey to Salem, where they would be transferred to a warehouse owned by some “friends” of Seth’s. While William rode in the special compartment built into the side of the wagon, his family was to be hidden inside one of the crates, which had holes bored into the sides and a bottom where Marantha and the children could see out, get air, and communicate with Seth or William. This crate was laid across the front of the wagon behind the driver’s seat, and the lid was tacked into place in such a way that it could be easily removed. The night before they left, the wagon was taken to Seth’s, and the Hogarths escorted the family through the woods to the Hodges’ place, where they had spent their first, and now their last, night in Sethsburg.
“Thank ye so much for all ye done for us.” William shook Caleb’s hand. Marantha and the children hugged Jessie and Mittens good-bye. Their old clothes had been burned, and they now wore the fresh new garments that Martha had cut out for them. Marantha had welcomed the chance to join Martha, Jessie, and Mittens in sewing them together while the children recovered. Martha had packed them two days worth of food and a jug of water to carry inside the crates, lined with heavy quilts. Long before sunrise, they were on the next leg of their journey, and Jessie forever after would wonder what had become of them.
*****
A tear fell from his eaves as Hogarth remembered seeing William and Marantha and the children walking away toward the Hodges’ place.
“Here’s another one of Hogarth’s tears,” Alice said, pointing to a droplet of water on the porch floor beside her friend. The other girl looked in amazement, and Hogarth smiled.
Chapter 28
Winter set in quickly in the year of 1834, but Brad, Job, and Luke had busied themselves in the fall with cutting lumber for a couple of small houses for Luke and Job on the Bascoms’ land. Their coal business had slowly grown, and they found themselves in the position of having to hire more men to work their mine. The one wagon and team of horses that Seth had given them in the beginning had already paid for itself several times over—so much so that they had to buy another team to keep their wagon on the road.
Despite their growing business, travel was still a major issue. When the weather was dry or the ground was frozen, travel was simple. But, when the rains came and the ground thawed, travel slowed to a crawl, and breakdowns were frequent. These kept Jed and Zeke busy with repair work. Job and Luke managed to work out a system in which they worked at removing the coal from their mine when travel was not at its best. Once the ground was frozen, they were in a better position to make their deliveries with less turmoil. By the spring of 1835, it became clear they were going to need a second wagon. As the number of steamboats increased along the Ohio, the demand for coal was going to expand. There was still talk of a railroad expanding, but this seemed kind of far-fetched.
As for maintaining the one good road Sethsburg had, the state had no money to hire work done. Talk of internal improvements such as a road was quickly becoming a major political issue. Each spring and each fall, the men of Sethsburg usually set aside a full week to examine the road Jed and Jacob had originally built, and shore up any areas that were likely to cause trouble in the coming seasons. Those who worked received no pay, but the county did give them a break on their property taxes. For many, this was as good as cash, but this alone was not enough to keep the roads in good shape, especially the section between Sethsburg and the old village. Even the stage line, which now came through on a twice-weekly schedule, was obliged to send out its own road crews to help keep the road open. Unfortunately, despite the abundance of fertile fields surrounding Sethsburg, the westward migration was growing. While many passed through the town, none stayed behind to help the town grow. For the time being, progress in Sethsburg seemed to have come to a standstill.
For Caleb, the slower pace of the town was much to his liking. He was a farmer, as was his pa before him, and he had little interest in matters outside his farm. Despite his initial disappointment that his sons weren’t going to follow in his path, he consoled himself with the belief that perhaps his grandson, Little Jed, would. The boy was growing taller and stronger, and the two of them spent hours together checking on their growing fruit trees and fence rows and talking about the crops they wished to plant. Little Jed wasn’t much help yet, but he sure was good company, and though he didn’t realize it, he learned much at his grandpa’s knee. One early April morning when they were checking on the road a short distance from the Bascoms’ homestead, they happened upon what appeared to be a peddler’s cart, without the peddler. Curious, Caleb called, “Hey! Neighbor!” and a man stepped out of the tree line carrying a shovel and a bagful of what appeared to be soil.
He tossed the bag into his wagon and pulled out an empty one before turning to introduce himself. “Howdy, the name’s Carpenter. Ya know who owns this land? I’m a thinkin’ about buyin’ a piece if its fer sale. Anyway, I was collecting some soil samples before I make my decision,” he elaborated.
“What’cha doin’ with all that dirt, mister?” Young Jed couldn’t resist as he studied the pile of bags in the man’s wagon.
“Well, young man, I’m a potter by trade, and this here dirt is really clay. I met a couple of young men a few months back who told me they were minin’ coal and since coal and clay kinda form up together, I followed ’em out here to check out the land. I’m gettin’ some samples to take back with me to Madison. If’n it works out right, I’ll buy the land,” Carpenter responded to both the boy and the older man with the curious look on his face.
Always eager to learn something new, Jed’s curiosity was not nearly so well contained as his grandpa’s. “What’s a potter?” he asked.
Struck by the forthrightness of the boy, the potter grinned widely and reached into his wagon to pull out samples of his wares. “Well, now here’s what happens to this dirt when I get done with it.” He handed a small, round earthen jar to the boy. “Here, you can keep this one so you can store your valuables in it.”
Jed studied the jar, much like the ones he’d seen in the Hodges’ grocery store—the kind that came with peaches and stuff inside them and were sealed with sealing wax. The thought that such a thing could be made out of dirt like the man had in his bags filled him with awe and wonder. “Ma will really like this,” he exclaimed. “She don’t have many jars. She and Grandma dry most of our fruit. Me and grandpa have fruit trees. We’re gonna get a lot of stuff off them this year.” He hugged his gift to him as if it was the dearest thing he owned.
Caleb was surprised to see the other man pay so much attention to the boy. “You got any children?” he inquired. The man, who appeared to be about the same age as Jed, told him he had a wife and three children who were staying with her family in Madison while he scouted out land where they could homestead. “I think my in-laws are lookin’ forward to being rid of us,” he quipped. He went on to explain that his father-in-law was in the clay business in Madison, where they built brick.
As the two men got acquainted, Carpenter had many questions about the town of Sethsburg, and Caleb was glad to answer them.
At Sarah and Jed’s house, Jed was busy putting the finishing touches to another of the chairs he was making for the state house. In all, he was to make two dozen of them. Using the same foot-operated lathe his father had bought years before, he had devised a plan to build more than one chair at a time. While Jed worked in his shop, Brad had begun plowing his mother’s garden and had set aside a little plot of his own. Since moving out of the family home and into the old cabin once inhabited by Abner, he had been thinking more and more about having his own home. He was also wondering how his ma would react to his idea of asking Little Jessie to marry him. Although they had practically grown up as brother and sister, he reminded himself that they really weren’t blood relations. He’d been pondering this question for months and was beginning to get impatient with himself, almost as much as Jessie. They’d discussed the idea once, but it had been there a long time. Almost like it was a given, something to be expected. Granted, he wouldn’t reach the age of majority for another two years, but he and Jessie were the same age, and at nineteen she was already in danger of being called a spinster.
Meanwhile, he was anxious to get this job over with so that he could begin working on his other fields. Each year, it became a major operation to plow and plant enough vegetables and grains to feed their family of six plus all their pigs, cows, sheep, and chickens for an entire year. After he got their own done, he’d promised Caleb he’d help with his crops. Usually, Jed did most of the work, but this year he had too many orders for furniture. Inside the house, Sarah watched her son working on her garden and was already sorting her seeds. She should have had her potatoes in the ground by now, she chided herself. She watched her son and realized that he was no longer a boy, no matter how much she wished she could hang onto him. She’d been watching him and Mittens for a long time and recognized the lights that were taking shape in their eyes. Trouble was, he still wasn’t twenty-one yet and couldn’t get married without her permission. But, for that matter, neither could Jessie without her mom and dad. But Sarah knew they wouldn’t object either. She just wondered how long would it take for her son to get the nerve to ask her permission.