The Lost Quilter

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Go,” Gerda barked, her thin, plain face hardening into a mask of fury and fear as she shoved Joanna toward the hidden alcove. Without thinking, Joanna scrambled through the rough entrance Hans had cut through the plaster and drew her legs up to her chest, pressing herself against the back wall. Gerda set the false door in place and dragged the treadle sewing machine in front of it. Just as the baying of dogs reached her ears, Joanna remembered her son, cooing and kicking on the quilt in plain sight. Faint with horror, she pressed a shaking hand against the plaster, barely visible in the dusty darkness.

  “Bergstrom, open up!” came a muffled shout from downstairs, then a crash as the front door was forced open. There was a creaking of bedsprings, Gerda’s footsteps quick on the floorboards. Surely Gerda had taken the baby with her. She would find another hiding place for him.

  Joanna said a silent prayer, her eyes fixed on the thin crack of light outlining the false door. Somewhere downstairs, men shouted and Anneke screamed. Boots pounded, swift and heavy on the stairs. Dogs barked, frenzied from the hunt, closer and closer. The sewing machine scraped across the floor, plaster crumbled, and the false door fell away.

  “We got ourselves a nigger, boys!”

  Arms reached in, seized her, dragged her from the hidden alcove. Joanna fought and scratched and kicked as rough hands tore her clothes and tangled in her hair. Suddenly Gerda flew into sight like a terrible bird of prey, clawing at the men, screaming an unearthly howl of rage. Suddenly Joanna found herself free.

  “Run, Joanna,” Gerda screamed. One of the men lashed out with his fist and struck Gerda across the face. Her eyes rolled back and she crumpled to the floor.

  Joanna ran for the door, but the other man caught hold of her skirt and yanked her off her feet. “You’re done runnin’, girl,” he snarled close to her ear, his breath reeking from tobacco. She struggled, but his grip tightened on her upper arm. His companion seized her other arm and together they wrestled her from the room and down the stairs, kicking and fighting. Through tears and blood, she glimpsed Hans sprawled motionless on the floor, his wife Anneke on her knees, reaching for him, weeping. Two other white men stood nearby. One of them nudged Hans with his muddy boot, but he did not respond. Frantic, Joanna looked around for her son, but before she could catch sight of him, the men dragged her from the house and into the yard, where they flung her to the ground, muddy and cool from a recent spring rain.

  Four horses stood at the hitching post. Numb, her ears ringing, Joanna staggered to her feet and tried to run, but the larger of the two men caught up with her in two strides. “Fetch a rope,” he barked. The other man took a long coil of rope, bound Joanna’s wrists, and lashed the other end to the pommel of his saddle.

  The sharp fibers cut into her skin. “Please,” she said, an involuntary moan. “Please.”

  The second man slapped her hard across the mouth. “Hush up.” He nodded to his companion. “Let’s head out. I want to clear the pass before sundown.”

  Joanna tasted blood and dirt. Desperately she strained against the rope, but the knots held fast. The men mounted their horses. Frantically Joanna tore at the ropes with her teeth, but the man dug his heels into the horse’s side and she was yanked into a stumbling run. She threw one last look at the farmhouse and glimpsed Gerda in the doorway, clutching her side, her face gray with pain and despair. Then the horse broke into a trot and Joanna tore her gaze away as they splashed across the creek and climbed the opposite bank. Soon the dark wood closed around them, and the farmhouse disappeared, as completely as if it had never existed.

  Her captors did not have her son. She clenched her teeth against sobs. Had he been left behind intentionally? Those other two men—had they come for him? Would they take her baby somewhere else, sell him somewhere else?

  For miles she half ran, half stumbled after the horses, blinded by tears, dizzy with grief. They had been so close to freedom. The false papers, the horse and carriage Hans had promised her—they would have carried her and her son to Canada. But now all was lost.

  Where was her son?

  Hours passed in a blur of pain. She lost sensation in her hands, a bitter mercy. Her wrists were scraped raw until the rope that bound them became soaked with blood. She lost a shoe, one of the good, sturdy shoes Gerda had given her, fit to walk miles in. They could have seen her all the way to Canada and freedom, but instead, instead one was lost and one would take her back to Virginia, back to that plantation, to certain punishment, to the lash—

  Her stomach rebelled and she was sick. Ahead of her, one of the men cursed and the other laughed.

  “That’s a right ugly scar on her face, ain’t it, Peter,” the shorter man remarked to the other, who grunted a reply. “Say, girl, how’d you get that? Horse kick you?”

  “That’s a burn,” Peter said. “Didn’t you read the handbill, Isaac? Mr. Chester did it with a flatiron.”

  When the shorter man nodded and said no more, Joanna understood. He couldn’t read. She could. Gerda had taught her. All those winter months trapped indoors, hiding, waiting for the baby, for spring—she had put the time to good use. But it was dangerous for a slave to possess such forbidden knowledge—dangerous, and maybe fatal. If Marse Chester discovered she could read, he might kill her for it, but maybe, maybe he would never find out. The slave catchers had to sleep sometime. She could get free, disappear into the night—

  The horse quickened its pace and nearly pulled her off her feet.

  Reeling, Joanna fought to stay conscious. The men wouldn’t pause if she fell; they would drag her behind the horses if they had to. As long as she made it back to Greenfields alive, they would get their money. Broken or sound, as long as she lived, it made no difference to them.

  She had to get away.

  Every step sent shooting pains up her right leg; her lifeless arms strained as if they would be torn from their sockets. She longed to let her mind drift free of her body, but she dared not—she had to remember the way back. Her eyes darted, seizing upon landmarks, noting forks in the road. She made a verse of them and repeated it to herself, a song set to the pace of the horses’ hooves, adding new lines as they passed significant features. Her memory could not fail her. She had to find the way back.

  The farther south they traveled, the longer her return journey would be. Each mile put her son in greater jeopardy. It might already be too late. The other two men might already have sold him off into slavery so far south that Joanna might never find him.

  The miles and hours passed in a blur of pain. Landmarks became more difficult to distinguish from the endless similarity of rocky road, forested glen, and burbling creek. When the sun lay low on the horizon, Peter allowed them to stop and set up camp where a stream crossed a clearing. Joanna drank her fill, but Isaac did not untie her hands and they gave her nothing to eat. Her milk had soaked through the front of her dress, all but indistinguishable from the sweat and filth of the road. She pictured her son’s sweet red mouth and felt her milk let down. She turned her back on the men and folded her arms across her chest, pressing hard against her nipples to staunch the flow. The slave catchers had not mentioned her son, not once, not to goad her about her loss, not even to speculate about the price he would fetch when the other two men sold him into slavery. Maybe they did not know about the baby she had left behind.

  Days passed. Sometimes the shorter man, Isaac, tied her hands and feet and made her ride flung over his horse; other days he bound only her hands and made her walk behind. It was Peter’s choice, and Joanna never knew what he would choose until he said it. As much as walking exhausted her, she bitterly hated riding, for the horse carried her more swiftly away from her son.

  One hazy morning as the sun beat down, raising spectral waves over the hard-packed dirt road, as the horse shook flies from its mane and Joanna rode with her cheek against its sweaty shoulder, half dozing, light-headed from the heat and from hunger, she was startled fully awake by the sound of gunfire.

  “Fireworks,” Pet
er remarked, jerking his head to the east and patting the horse’s neck to steady it. Joanna craned her neck and spied a yellow farmhouse in the middle of a wheat field, a puff of white smoke rising into the sky behind it.

  “Happy Independence Day, Peter,” said Isaac.

  “Same to you.”

  “Say, Peter,” Isaac said, “why don’t we stop in town and do a little celebrating? Chester don’t know we got his girl. He ain’t expecting us, so he won’t know if we bide our time.”

  “I’d rather get rid of her and get our pay.”

  “A few hours here or there won’t matter none. Come on, Peter, it’s unpatriotic not to pause and reflect on Independence Day. It’s been a long ride and I’m parched for a real drink.”

  Peter eyed him skeptically, but then allowed a slow smile. “Well, I daresay if you’re buying, I could use a drink myself.”

  “Let’s drink to our country and to the health of that pretty little thing who turned in this here wench,” said Isaac. “Such sweet lips ripe for kissing, and best of all, she don’t speak a word of English.”

  As the two men laughed, Joanna went cold and numb. Anneke. They could mean no one else. Anneke had betrayed her.

  The road took them past a few more farms, and then they came to the town, a few rows of houses and stores tucked into the fork of a river. Joanna automatically added the town to her list of landmarks, but she had been able to observe very little of the landscape during the miles she had lain on her stomach across the horse, and there were great gaping silences in her song. In her darkest moments she despaired of filling them, but then she remembered the feel of her son’s curly head in the crook of her arm, remembered his sweet baby scent as she held him, and remembered how she had made her way north once without knowing the way. Landmarks would help guide her, but she did not have to rely on them alone.

  Peter and Isaac took the horses to a livery stable on the western edge of town and paid to have them watered and fed. They left Joanna lying bound hand and foot in the straw on the floor of Isaac’s horse’s stall and went off in search of a tavern. Fearful of the horse’s hooves, Joanna dug in her heels and pushed herself to the far corner, where she managed to sit up and take stock of her surroundings. Dim sunlight filtered in through the open stable door, and the sweet, pungent smell of manure lingered in the air. From somewhere unseen came shouts of celebration and the popping of fireworks; a fly buzzed, and the horse’s ear twitched.

  With the stall door firmly latched, no one passing through the stable would see her or suspect she was there. The stable master knew, of course, because he had seen the men bring her in and had charged Peter extra for her. But the stall door hid her from view, and until Peter and Isaac returned, she could work on the ropes unobserved.

  Her mouth was dry; her stomach rumbled. She longed for a dipperful of cold water. She glanced around for a stone, a tool, anything, and spied a bent nail protruding from the wall a few feet away. Inching toward it, she flinched as Isaac’s horse stomped a hoof and whickered nervously. “You just settle down now,” she said in what she hoped was a soothing tone. She pushed herself up onto her knees and strained to reach the nail. Back and forth she scraped the ropes against the nail, over and over again, until her arms ached and her back was drenched with sweat, until at last some of the fibers broke and the knots loosened.

  Furiously, she sawed away on the ropes until they fell away. Heart pounding, ears straining for the sound of approaching footsteps, she tore into the ropes binding her feet. How long had the men been away? One hour? Two? They could return at any moment. Should she steal Isaac’s horse? She would make better time on horseback, but she was not a good rider and the theft would draw the stablehands’ attention. Better to slip away quietly and stay out of sight.

  When her shaking hands failed to loosen the knots, she strained against the ropes, wrenching them up her calves and exposing the buttons on her remaining shoe. Quickly she undid the fastenings and yanked off the shoe—and the ropes went slack around her ankles. She kicked herself free, took a steadying breath, and rose shakily to her feet. Her head spun; she clung to the wall until her vision cleared. Isaac’s horse whinnied and tossed its head. Joanna crept around him and cautiously peered over the stall door. A white man in work clothes passed outside the entrance to the stable, but he did not glance her way. Her eyes fixed on the sun-drenched stableyard, Joanna reached over the stall door and lifted the latch.

  The door swung open with a creak.

  She slipped out of the stall, closed the door behind her, and silently stole toward the open doorway. She heard men approaching before they appeared; she ducked behind the door until the men passed and their voices faded.

  She longed for the cover of night.

  She took a deep breath, murmured a desperate prayer, and cautiously peered around the door. Three men stood in the stableyard, resting casually against the fence and watching holiday revelers pass. No one looked her way. She took one step into the yard, and then two, silent, careful steps along the side of the stable, her gaze locked on the workers. When she reached the corner, she peered around it but saw no one. Everyone must be in the town, distracted by fireworks and speeches. Ahead of her stretched a broad cornfield cut by a road, the pale green shoots knee-high; beyond it a hill sloped toward a thick cluster of trees.

  She took one last look around and broke into a run.

  She raced across the cornfield, stumbling in the furrows, bare feet sinking into the soil, ears straining for the shouts of alarm that would surely come at any moment. Her breath came in raw gasps, tearing from her lungs. The sun shone fiercely, turning the road into a bright glaring line, impossibly far away.

  She heard the wagon before it emerged from the trees. She flung herself to the ground, knowing the green shoots would hardly conceal her. Exposed, she held perfectly still, digging her hands into the moist earth as if to fix herself in place. The sounds of jingling harness and clomping hooves grew louder, passed, faded, until only the hum of insects and the distant popping of fireworks remained.

  For minutes Joanna could not move except to tremble.

  She dragged herself to her feet and sprinted for the road. Her filthy skirt clung to her legs, threatening to trip her up. Panting, she yanked it out of the way and dashed across the road, dirt and pebbles hot and sharp against her bare feet. Another acre of corn, and then she reached the grassy slope. She flung herself down the hill, half running, half falling, the trees ahead of her cool and dark and beckoning. Branches scratched at her hands and face as she broke a path into their shade. She pushed through the underbrush until she could not see the cornfield, until the fireworks fell silent behind her. Only then did she sink to the ground at the base of an oak, gasping for breath, limbs shaking, a cramp stabbing her side. “Praise Jesus,” she sobbed between gasps, but she knew she was far from safe.

  She plunged ahead on the trail, straining her ears for the sound of pursuit. All she heard was birdsong, and her own jagged breathing, and the blood pounding in her ears. The woods were cool and shaded, a blessed relief, but her mouth was dry, her stomach hollow. It took all her strength to stay upright and moving.

  After a time, the woods thinned ahead of her and she slowed her pace, reluctant to cross an open meadow. All too soon the trail ended at the edge of a wheat field, the pale green shoots rustling in an intermittent wind. About a quarter mile ahead, she spotted the back of a tidy white farmhouse with a wraparound porch. A barn and two smaller outbuildings stood several yards away, and beside the barn she spotted an iron pump with a trough. Horses milled in a nearby corral, and the wind carried to her the lowing of a cow and the clucking of chickens. On the sunny, southeastern corner of the house, a large kitchen garden thrived, and a few paces away, two quilts hung on a clothesline strung up between two trees. Joanna recognized the patterns, a Rose of Sharon and an Economy Patch, neither of which were the secret designs that indicated she had reached a station on the Underground Railroad. For all she knew, those patchwork
symbols carried meaning only in the Elm Creek Valley. When she had journeyed north months before, no other stations had used a quilt to tell a weary runaway that she had found sanctuary. Each family had made themselves known in a unique manner that she was told only as she departed the station before. Now the order and nature of those symbols were so jumbled in her memory that she had no hope of sorting them out. Even if she could, Peter had chosen a different route south than the one Joanna had followed north, and she did not know how to find her way back to the Underground Railroad. She wasn’t even sure where she was, how close to the Pennsylvania border or how far.

  There were no slave quarters here that she could see, but that was no guarantee that the folk were abolitionists. It was a small farm, and perhaps they could not afford any slaves. Light-headed, wavering, Joanna watched from the woods, but she detected no sign of any people, no movement except the horses grazing and the quilts swinging back and forth in the breeze. It was late afternoon, the sun still high in the summer sky, and she knew she ought to press on and wait until nightfall to approach a dwelling. But she also knew she might not come upon another source of water before she fainted from exhaustion.

  She waited as long as she could bear, her gaze returning again and again to the pump. Then, praying that this family too had gone into town to enjoy the Independence Day celebration, she crossed the wheat field and approached the back of the house, ready to flee at the first sign of danger.

  When she reached the pump, she worked the handle with shaking hands until water gushed from the spout. She cupped her hands beneath the clear, cold water and drank her fill, pausing only to pump the handle and start the flow again, the iron handle creaking like a song of joy. When her thirst was quenched, she pumped more water to wash her feet and face, laughter bubbling up like the water from the hidden spring. Refreshed, almost gleeful, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and shook the droplets from her fingertips—