The Root Cellar

by Janet Lunn

  “Is it eight in the morning or eight at night?”

  “Eight in the morning. You get to New York at seven-thirty p.m. Connections to Washington at twelve midnight.”

  When Rose arrived back at the Jerues’, the boarders had been fed and the family was sitting down to a meal larger than the one they had eaten at noon.

  After dinner Mrs. Jerue said, “Well, it’s all arranged with Jake Pierson. He says to be down to the wharf by half past seven, and if the wind’s come up good he’ll sail.”

  Susan said, “Yes, ma’am,” obediently, and went upstairs to the little room they had been given to sleep in.

  “Now, you children brighten up them long faces,” Mrs. Jerue told them as she bade them goodnight. “You’d think tomorrow was hanging day for the both of you. It ain’t. Susan’s going home where she’s needed, and you’re going home where I’m sure your mother is going to be one mighty happy woman. I know it’s a trial, but you have to have some faith that our boys will get home safe without your help. The good Lord’s been running this old world a long time without your telling him how to do it, and I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if he was to go on doing it long after you’re both pushing up the daisies.”

  After she had left them they looked the room over for a means of escape. All that offered itself was one window with a porch roof below, but the porch was at least twelve feet down, and there was another twelve or thirteen feet from there to the ground. It seemed as though Mrs. Jerue had known what they meant to do. The only entrance to the room was through her bedroom.

  They sat for over an hour concocting wild plans. Sitting on their cots, they talked in whispers of tying sheets together and lowering themselves out of the window. Susan was sure they would fall and break all their bones. Rose said that even if they managed to get away and hide all night in the railroad station, Mrs. Jerue was sure to discover they had gone.

  “She’ll come marching down to the station to get us.” Rose giggled. “I can see them, the seven little boys, the three girls, and maybe all the boarders, too. ‘Give them up!’ they’ll shout. Then they’ll lead us off in chains.”

  “What if we set out for the schooner without making no fuss and then slip off and go to the train?”

  “Susan! You’re a genius! Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Shhh!”

  “All right. What we have to do is say I’m coming to see you off. Then we’ll get away somehow and get over to the station. I wish I hadn’t made up that story about New York. Then we could both go without them asking why. Mrs. Jerue said you have to be at the wharf at seven-thirty, so if we run like thieves we can get the train on time. What a great idea!”

  Susan smiled. “Ain’t you getting giddy! I never knowed you to be like this. Like Min Jerue says, you’re a forward little fellow.”

  “Yes, I am, aren’t I!” Rose was pleased with how things were working out. She had never before felt so in command of a situation. As Susan said, she felt giddy. “Here, you find room for my things in your suitcase so they won’t suspect.”

  Susan put Rose’s socks, underwear, and clean jeans in the suitcase with her few things, but when Rose handed her the music box and the book, she stopped. “What did you bring these for?”

  “I don’t know.” Rose was embarrassed. “I just always do.” Susan stuffed Rose’s treasures into the corners of her suitcase and said no more about them.

  At quarter to seven the next morning, resplendent in a parrot-green dress, Mrs. Jerue served them a breakfast of porridge, ham, eggs, and fresh muffins.

  “Charlie’ll take you down to the wharf,” she told them. “I’ve made up a package of things I want you to take to Patty and I’ve written a letter, if you’ll oblige, Susan.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Susan didn’t look at Rose.

  “I’m going with Charlie to see Susan off,” said Rose.

  Mrs. Jerue eyed her suspiciously. Rose returned her gaze without blinking. Mrs. Jerue was not convinced. “You go along, but mind you stay close by Charlie. Joey says you was down street by yourself yesterday and I’m not sure what you’ve been up to. I’ve half a mind to come along and make sure Susan gets off without you.”

  Rose gulped. She thought quickly. “Why don’t you come?” she said sweetly.

  “Aw, come on, Ma,” said Charlie. “You’re too fat, you’ll take too long.” Nimbly he jumped to avoid the cuff his mother aimed at his right ear.

  “Charles Jerue, you mind your tongue. Well, it is getting late and I have things to do. You’ll have to go without me. But mind, no hanky-panky, David, and I’ll see you back here in no more than half an hour. Good-bye, Susan.” She gave Susan a hug. “You go on home and be a comfort to poor dear Patty—Lord knows she needs it.”

  Susan said good-bye, and off they went after Charlie who, with some sense of either duty or companionship, stuck right with them until in desperation Rose said loudly, “Oh, Susan, you forgot your shawl!”

  “My shawl?” said Susan blankly.

  “You know, Susan. You left it in the bedroom. If Charlie could run back.…”

  “Why don’t you go yourself?” demanded Charlie.

  “I might get lost.”

  “It’s just around the corner. You can’t get lost.”

  Susan looked from one to the other. “Please, Charlie,” she said in a low voice.

  “Oh, all right, but you wait. Don’t you move.”

  As soon as Charlie was out of sight, Rose grabbed Susan’s hand and they raced off.

  The station was crowded with people laden with parcels and suitcases, saying good-byes, chasing straying children. “I’ll get the tickets. You keep a lookout in case someone comes after us.” Rose’s voice was sharp with excitement.

  “I ain’t standing over here if you’re going over there,” cried Susan. She grabbed Rose’s arm. “Not if Min Jerue and the whole United States army was to come after me, I ain’t.” So they went together, pushing their way through the crowd, turning anxiously every other second to check if there was anyone coming after them. Waiting in line for the tickets seemed to take forever. Susan was horrified at the cost. “You can buy a whole cow for less than that back home!” But she gave Rose the money.

  The train was smaller than any Rose had ever seen. The engine was bright blue and trimmed with brass. It bore a brass bell in front of its cab, and a cow catcher out in front. Its smokestack was cone shaped, the smoke coming out of it in steady puffs. Behind the engine was the coal tender and a row of luggage cars and coaches that proclaimed on their sides: OSWEGO AND SYRACUSE RAILWAY.

  Inside, the coach was paneled in dark wood and the seats were straw-covered and prickly. Rose and Susan found seats about halfway down the car, stowed their suitcase in the rack overhead, and sat down, peering nervously through the window and down the aisle.

  The car filled quickly. A woman with four children settled her family in two double seats across the aisle. A sour-looking man, carefully dusting off his seat first, sat down in front of them. A sad-faced soldier, a couple of noisy boys, and a very fat woman paraded toward the back of the car. Rose breathed a sigh of relief and sat back just as Susan gasped. “Look, Rose!” Through the window Rose saw Charlie coming through the crowd accompanied by a tall man and followed by Mrs. Jerue steaming like the locomotive, her collar undone and her bonnet awry. As though on signal, Susan and Rose ducked below the window ledge, staring into each other’s eyes.

  “All aboard,” shouted the conductor. “All aboard for Syracuse, Albany, New York. All aboard, boooard!”

  “Wait!” It was Mrs. Jerue. “Wait!”

  The train whistled its loud, high-pitched toot-toot, and with a jerk, a stop, and another jerk, pulled out of the station.

  The Train to New York

  In a few minutes the conductor came along and punched their tickets. “You youngsters have to change trains at Syracuse,” he told them. “Now I’ll keep an eye on you and see you get off all right, but you keep Syracuse in mind.” He was a
big, comfortable-looking man with a pink, clean-shaven face and a ready smile, and at first they were grateful to him. But when every time he came through the car he said, “Well, now, how’re you youngsters getting on?” and patted Rose on the head, they began to see him as a big nuisance. Rose drew a picture of him in the coal dust on the window, and Susan said he looked a little like a pig Henry Bother had once won a prize for at the Soames fair, that was called Derrington Halpenny. So they called the conductor Derrington Halpenny and nudged each other every time he came near.

  They watched through the window as they flew by the farms and villages. Sometimes there were shacks built near the tracks and children came running to line up and wave at the train. Sometimes they passed over brooks or small rivers where the shrill screech of the sawmills could be heard even over the sound of the train.

  “They got elms and maples and cedar and tamarack swamps same as us,” said Susan. “They got villages that looks like Collivers’ Corners, even if they talk different and are going all the time. I guess mebbe the States isn’t all that different.” Comforted by this observation, she settled back.

  Rose nodded. “I suppose Americans are a lot busier than Canadians.”

  She watched the woman across the aisle trying to keep her children in order. “I’ve got to say I’m going to be some pleased to get them home,” she called to Rose. It turned out that the woman was called Mrs. Heilbrunner. She was small, with pale skin, pale hair, and pale blue eyes. She was dressed in black, because her husband had been killed in the war, and she said she was going to live with her mother and father on the family farm a few miles north of Albany.

  Rose told her that she and Susan were brother and sister and they were going south to look for their brother who hadn’t come home from the war.

  “God bless you.” Mrs. Heilbrunner had tears in her eyes. She asked which regiment Will was in. When Rose told her, she exclaimed, “Why, my Walter, Lord rest his soul, was in that regiment. He died at Cold Harbor. What’s your brother’s name?”

  Rose told her about Will and Mrs. Heilbrunner remembered her husband writing her about a boy who could play the flute. “Charm the birds out of the trees he could, that’s what my Walter said. And he’s your brother, land sake!”

  Mrs. Heilbrunner was sympathetic. She told Rose that Walter had been in a hospital in Washington and gave her the name of the hospital. Rose wrote it down on the back of her train timetable.

  It took four hours to get from Oswego to Syracuse, by which time the delight of traveling had begun to wear off. Rose and Susan were sticky from heat and coal dust and glad to change trains just to have something to do. They had no chance to look around the station, however, as Derrington Halpenny took them completely in charge, carrying their suitcase, beaming at them, telling them at every step, “Now you two youngsters, don’t you worry. I’ll get you on that train for Albany all right.” He piloted them through the station and settled them on the Albany train, with three-quarters of an hour to wait before it started.

  The fat woman and the sour-faced man got on, too. Mrs. Heilbrunner and her four children sat down opposite them. A drunk sat right behind them, muttering and complaining and drinking noisily out of a bottle he had with him.

  Through the window they watched the busy crowds. There were many soldiers and the number of black people amazed Susan. “I ain’t never seen but two before,” she whispered. “They come across the lake with Captain Armitage. They’d run off from being slaves. They was kind of sad. I don’t know where they went after. Ain’t they black!”

  “I suppose so. I’ve never thought about it. There are lots of black people in New York, as many as white people, I think. Susan, let’s get something to drink.”

  “We don’t need nothing. We got to watch our money. I know we got seventeen dollars and thirty cents left, but things is terrible dear.”

  “But I’m so hot. Really. I feel like a baked apple. You can stay here if you like and I’ll go and get it. Give me some money.”

  Reluctantly Susan gave Rose twenty-five cents.

  Out on the platform, Rose found a lemonade stall and asked for two cups. She discovered that there was only the one tin cup attached by a string to the stand, so she had her drink and hurried back to Susan.

  “You have to go. He doesn’t have any cups.”

  “How much?”

  “It’s only five cents.”

  “Five cents? A whole five cents for one cup of lemonade? I don’t want none.”

  “Don’t be silly, Susan. It’s good.”

  “I don’t want none. Five cents! The man who sold it to you is a thief.”

  “That’s right, girlie, you tell ’em.” The drunk in the seat behind leaned forward, breathing whisky in their faces. “You got brains in that pretty little head of yours. I like that.”

  Susan shrank away from him and said nothing. Rose glared at him over the back of the seat. He frowned at her, leaned forward, and pulled her nose. “Mind your manners, sonny,” he growled. “You better sit back here and let me sit with the little lady so her and me can talk.” He staggered to his feet.

  Stunned by the surprise of the attack on her nose and the sudden pain, Rose just stared at the man. But before he could make another move, Mrs. Heilbrunner leaned across the aisle and said sharply, “Don’t you pester those youngsters!”

  At that moment, the conductor came through and the drunk sat back in his own seat, grumbling and muttering about meddlesome old hens.

  The bell clanged, the whistle blew, the conductor shouted his “All aboard!” and the train started.

  “Did he hurt you?” Susan whispered.

  “No,” said Rose, but he had, and he had frightened her. She was relieved when she heard him begin to snore loudly. Susan dozed beside her.

  They were traveling east across the state through the Mohawk Valley. The landscape looked more and more desolate with every click of the train’s wheels. “It’s them seventeen-year locusts,” Mrs. Heilbrunner told her. “My ma says them bugs has ate up everything in Upper New York State that grows, and lots that don’t.” The grain had been neatly stacked near Oswego and across the lake in Canada. Here everything was chewed to the ground. In the August heat, with the coal dust along the train tracks, it was a dismal sight.

  “My ma says she don’t know how they’re going to feed us all because of them locusts.” Mrs. Heilbrunner sighed. “But she says she’s supposing the Lord will provide and I’m supposing that, too. What else can we do?”

  Rose listened to bits of conversation from other passengers talking in voices loud enough to sound over the squalling of Mrs. Heilbrunner’s children and the clickety-click of the train wheels. Someone was singing “The Union Forever” in an off-key baritone and the man in the seat behind woke now and then to curse mumblingly into his beard.

  Rose was so hungry she had a headache, and the day was sweltering. There was no breeze. To open the window meant coal dust and large cinders flying in. Coal dust lay over everything—it was even in her teeth.

  They reached Albany in the late afternoon. Rose climbed up and brought down the suitcase. She said good-bye to Mrs. Heilbrunner, who wished them a tearful Godspeed. Then, with Susan clinging to her hand, she led the way into the station. Susan, so calm and capable at home, was unexpectedly terrified in the pushing, shouting city throngs. She had never in her life seen such crowds. Her nervousness worried Rose, and she no longer felt that euphoria that had set them both giggling wildly the evening before. The station was jammed with people. Men with megaphones were shouting the arrival of their train and three others on their way to New York, Boston, and Montreal. A group of soldiers was being greeted with cheers and a band playing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and everywhere the hawkers shouted their wares. By pushing and shoving, and hitting people with the edge of the suitcase, Rose got them through the crowd, found their train, and got them on it. Susan was white. Her jaw was set.

  “There’s so many people, Rose!”
/>   Rose was about to reply that there were a lot more people in New York City when she was interrupted by a familiar, rasping voice.

  “All right, now, boy, you just move away and let the little lady and me have a nice talk.” A hand grabbed the back of her shirt and she was lifted out into the aisle. It was the drunk from the seat behind them in the Syracuse train. He reached past her and took Susan by the arm. There was a nasty smile on his face.

  “Rose,” gasped Susan. Without stopping to think, Rose grabbed Susan’s arm and yanked. The drunk was so surprised he let go of her other arm, and Rose fled with her from the car.

  They ran down the platform, through the station, and out onto the street beyond. There they crouched down behind a carriage that stood waiting to pick up passengers coming from the train.

  After a few minutes, Rose had caught her breath. “We have to go back, Susan. Our stuff’s in the train.” She stood up resolutely. Susan was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. “I can’t,” she whispered, “I can’t. I’m afraid of that man.”

  “Then you stay here.” But Susan would not stay alone so they went back into the station together. Rose had completely lost her bearings in their flight and had to ask directions all over again for the train to New York.

  “Better hurry, son.” The man at the information desk looked up at the clock. “I’m not sure that train’s still here.”

  They started to run, bumping into people, tripping over baggage, frantically making their way around vendors’ stalls, and reached the platform just in time to see the last car pull away from the station.

  Susan started to cry. Rose swallowed her own threatening tears and thought furiously.

  “It’s all right, Susan. The suitcase will go to New York and we can get it at the ‘lost and found.’ I’ve done that with my grandmother. We still have our tickets, so we can stay here until the next train comes. Even if it doesn’t come until tomorrow. We can wait.”

  “We can’t,” wailed Susan. “The tickets and our money are on the seat of the train. We don’t got nothing at all!”