Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana

by Melanie Dobson

  When Marie discovered that she, too, was expecting, she knew she had to run.

  She waited for months for an opportunity, and then one morning the slave driver had taken her and another girl out of the mill and sent them to collect ginseng for the very pregnant Mrs. Owens. As she wandered into the forest, the light summer rain turned into a violent thunderstorm. Lightning flashed around her and thunder crashed, but she kept on moving through the trees.

  No one had anticipated that she, so soon to her event, would run away. Yet she did run—through the forest, across the river, and into the rugged mountains.

  Master Owens and a few slaves from the plantation had come looking for her that night, but they never found her. When she heard the horses, she climbed a tree and hid in the branches. Master Owens rode right under her and never even looked up.

  Marie ran all the way to the Ohio, and when she reached the border between slave and free, a white woman had mercy on her and helped her cross the grand river, into the free state of Indiana. This woman pointed her to the farmhouse of a colored couple near Madison, and Marie birthed Peter in their cellar so no one would hear her pains. Days after Peter was born, Master Owens caught up to her. Somehow he had found out where she was hiding, and he came knocking on the front door.

  The colored man slipped her and Peter out the back while Master Owens was searching upstairs. The man gave her directions to the next station, and she’d been on this strange and wonderful railway ever since. Even when she got sick with the fever and her milk left her, people took care of her and Peter until she was healthy enough to journey north again. Marie looked into the face of her sleeping child. If she hadn’t run away from her master’s house, Peter would have met the same fate as Nelle’s child. One look into his pure, white face would have removed any doubt as to his father. Their mistress would never let anyone upstage the birth of her own child.

  Marie pulled her son to her chest and rocked him. Darkness slowly settled over the room, but she didn’t want to lay Peter down for fear that they might have to run again. If she were too far away, she wouldn’t be able to rescue him.

  She’d been with the Brents for almost a week now, and part of her was anxious to head north, toward freedom. Another part of her, though, was content to stay here in the warmth and security of their home. Anna and Charlotte were both kind to her, and Peter had plenty of milk to soothe his cries.

  She had watched Anna rock Peter in this very chair, watched her care for him when nothing seemed to stop his cries. Anna would be a good mother, never letting anything or anyone harm her child.

  The idea struck her quickly. She could leave Peter here and continue on the journey alone. He would live a privileged life with a white family. He would never even know that he had been born a slave. Anna would care for him for the rest of his life.

  But if she left him here, people would ask questions. They would want to know where Anna had gotten a baby. If anyone guessed that he was the son of a slave, he would be returned to Master Owens’s plantation to do whatever the master and his wife pleased.

  She suspected that they would dispose of him quickly, but if they didn’t, Master Owens would sell him at the market, and Peter would be sent into the cruel world alone to be mistreated by his new owner. He would never know how much his mother had loved him.

  She had to get him to Canada. It would be the only place where he could ever truly be free.

  Peter squirmed in her grasp, and she settled him back in her lap.

  After they crossed the great lake, she’d work as a house servant or in the fields or even in another mill. She’d do everything she could do so they could live together in freedom.

  Someone knocked gently on the door, and Anna slipped into the room.

  “I don’t want to disturb you,” Anna whispered. “I thought you might want some light.”

  “Yes...please,” Marie said quietly. It unsettled her to have a white woman waiting on her, but Peter had fallen back asleep, and she didn’t want to wake him.

  Anna lit two candles on the candle stand, and soft light filled the room.

  Marie’s benefactor was dressed in gray, but in spite of her plain attire, Anna’s face was one of the prettiest she had ever seen. So much prettier than that of Mrs. Owens. Even when she dressed in lace and finery, her mistress often had a cruel look in her eyes that frightened everyone in the house, including Master Owens.

  Anna’s kind eyes were the vibrant blue of the cornflowers Marie used to pick in Tennessee. And though Anna pinned her honey-colored hair back each morning, ringlets often fell to her shoulders and fluffed around her neck like ruffles. Marie wondered what it would be like to have such pretty hair.

  After she lit the candles, Marie thought Anna would hurry back to the kitchen, but she sat down on the bed instead. “I will miss you and Peter.”

  Marie stopped rocking. “Is it time ta go?”

  “In two more days.”

  Marie stared at the flickering candles. “I’ll be sad ta leave.”

  “You will be safe in Canada.”

  “I don’t care about my safety, Miss Anna.” Marie looked over her. “You see, if I die, my mama’s gonna meet me at them pearly gates.”

  “You’re not going to die,” Anna said gently.

  “I will if they catch me, because I ain’t goin’ back ta the plantation alive.”

  Anna took a pillow and hugged it to her chest. “Was it that bad for you there?”

  “They treated me okay, I guess, until...until they found out about the baby.”

  “They were angry?”

  “My mistress, she was furious. If she ever got hold of Peter, she’d either starve him or sell him.”

  “I’m so sorry, Marie.”

  She slid forward in the rocking chair. “It ain’t time for Peter ta go meet His Maker, Miss Anna. I want him ta live, and I want him ta be free.”

  “He’s going to be okay.”

  Peter squirmed again, this time from her tight grasp of his legs. “They ain’t gonna send him back.”

  “They won’t...”

  Marie turned to her, urgency pressing her to make Anna understand. “You gotta keep ’em from takin’ him back. They’ll do awful things ta my baby.”

  Anna reached out and took her hand. “We’re not going to let him go back.”

  Marie nodded. Maybe she should leave Peter here with Anna for just a while. She could send for him in a month or two, once she got to Canada and found a home and a position to support her and her son.

  “You’re a good mother, Marie.”

  Marie’s eyes filled with water, and she blinked. She hadn’t asked for this child, but she tried to be the best mother she could to him.

  “Am I doin’ the right thing?” she asked, her eyes pleading with Anna for an honest answer.

  “There’s no greater gift you can give to Peter than freedom.”

  “I’m gonna do my best.”

  Anna squeezed her hand. “And I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

  Chapter Eight

  KENTUKEY BUSINESSMAN DESPONTENT OVER LOST SLAVE

  Anna’s hand flew to her lips when she read the headline, but she couldn’t hide the grin.

  The front-page story of the Liberty Era was devoted to the escape of one Enoch Gardner and the despondency and woes of his owner, Whitney Johns. Apparently Enoch hadn’t been as contented in slavery as Whitney wanted everyone, including himself, to believe.

  A fortnight ago, Daniel reported, Enoch had slipped out of the tavern in Richmond where he was staying with his master, and no one had seen him since. Anna could almost hear the stout owner hollering Enoch’s name along the streets of Richmond like he was a dog that would come running home.

  Whitney said his slave had “lost his way” in the new city. He’d sent a search party out to retrieve the man, convinced that Enoch was walking around the city in distress and searching for his master.

  Run, Enoch! Anna whispered. If he kept pushing northwar
d, he would be in Canada in a couple of weeks.

  She doubted that Milton Kent’s paper would cover the story, but Daniel covered it in detail. The racket at the tavern on the river after Enoch was reported missing. The astonishment of Whitney Johns when someone suggested that Enoch might have run. The intensity and anger of the six slave hunters and their bloodhounds as they tracked the man up to Newport and then lost his trail.

  Had Daniel followed Whitney and Enoch after the debate and convinced Enoch to run? If he had urged Enoch to escape, he was creating news like Milton instead of just reporting it. Even so, a man brave enough to help a slave and write about it was the kind of person she wanted to support.

  She closed the newspaper, took her pen from the stand, and dipped the nib into the glass inkwell. Words spilled out of her and onto the linen paper on the desktop. Marie’s story was as powerful as any Anna had heard, and the former slave had given Anna permission to tell it as long as her name was changed, along with the name and location of her owner.

  Anna had readily agreed.

  Marie was a survivor and a fighter. She had survived her bitter introduction into womanhood when she went to live in her former master’s house. When she’d found out she was expecting, she’d turned into a fighter to save her child.

  Marie was more than a player in a story about escaping from slavery. She was a heroine who was risking her life for someone who couldn’t help himself.

  The door to the study creaked open, and Charlotte slid into the room.

  “Ben just delivered a message,” she whispered.

  Anna glanced at the window to make sure it was closed and then refocused on Charlotte. “What did he say?”

  “There’s a gentleman from Tennessee wandering around Liberty and asking about a slave girl named Marie. Said she has a baby with her.”

  Her stomach clenched. “No one knows she’s here.”

  “But they suspect she’s close.”

  Had the man and woman down the creek contacted Marie’s master? She wondered how much it was worth to them to turn over an innocent girl and her child.

  “Father is supposed to take them to Newport tomorrow,” Anna said.

  “Ben said we don’t have any time to lose. We need to take all of them west to the Sutters tonight to throw this man off the trail.”

  Anna checked the clock on the wall. “Father won’t be home for at least two more hours.”

  “We can’t wait that long,” Charlotte insisted as she backed toward the doorway. “George and I can prepare the wagon and put in the horses right now.”

  Anna replaced her pen and stood. When she was home from college, she had ridden with her father a dozen or so times to make a delivery. She didn’t know the route as well as he did, but she could take their friends to the Sutters’ station.

  She hid her papers inside a book and blew out the candle on the stand. “I can leave in twenty minutes.”

  Anna tied her wool cape across her shoulders and her bonnet around her head before she retrieved a flannel riding blanket from the trunk beside the front door. The night would be cold, but until she delivered her friends to the woods near the Sutter home, she wouldn’t feel the temperature. When she accompanied her father on these trips, she was so nervous she didn’t feel much of anything. Every time she heard a noise in the woods or the pound of horse hooves on the dirt, her heart seemed to stop beating entirely.

  Four of her guests stood in the basement kitchen, quietly eating cold ham and cheese. Every leg of the trip had dangers of its own, but this trip would be especially dangerous since Marie’s owner was searching the area for her.

  Marie looked up from the table, and Anna could see both fear and determination in her eyes. She may be afraid of her former master, but Anna was certain that she would fight for her life. Peter was awake in her arms, drinking from a bottle of honeyed milk mixed with a few drops of paregoric to help him sleep on their journey. Before Anna asked to hold him one last time, Marie eased the blanket off Peter and held out her arms. Anna gently took the child.

  Dressed in his cotton outfit and warm booties, with his golden hair hidden under his cap, he looked like any of the babies she’d seen pushed around in perambulators in Cincinnati or Indianapolis. His blue eyes focused on her face, and his lips moved into the slightest upturn that she knew in her heart was a smile. She pulled him to her cheek, and his long eyelashes brushed against her skin.

  Almost every other week she said good-bye to the runaways who had stayed in her home. And almost every time, she wanted to cry. Usually she could hold back her tears until they were gone.

  But this evening tears came unbidden, spilling over her cheeks before she realized she was crying. She turned her head away from her company and dried the wetness with the hem of her cape.

  The back door opened, and Charlotte peeked inside the kitchen. “The horses are ready.”

  With knapsacks over their shoulders, each of the men and women moved toward the door. Even in the few days they had been at the Brents’ home, they looked much better than when they had arrived. They were rested and fed and wore new clothes that had been hand-sewn by a small group of Quakeresses who donated their wares for people in need. The clothes the women made quickly disappeared from the meetinghouse storeroom, but they never asked questions about who benefited from their work. God called them to sew, and they simply answered.

  Anna felt privileged to be able to see how God used their sewing to turn a downtrodden collection of slaves into a polished assembly. Only the color of their skin—and the heaviness in their hearts—differentiated them from the thousands of farmworkers and businesspeople who lived in Union County.

  Peter still burrowed into her arm, Anna lifted the tin lantern from the table and clutched it in her hand. “May I take him?” she asked. Marie nodded, taking the tin lantern from her and carrying it outside.

  Darkness clung to the trees and outbuildings like a thick black cloak. The air was cool and misty, and in the distance, Anna could hear the creek pounding over the rocks in the gorge and then pouring into the river.

  Peter nudged his head against her cape, but he didn’t make a sound as they crept across the stone path to the barn. With every step, she prayed for him and begged God to protect Peter from the evil trying to capture his body and his mind. She prayed he would grow into a free man who would relish the grace and love and proddings of his heavenly Father instead of growing bitter at the earthly father who had rejected him.

  The Sutters owned the next safe house on the western line, but she didn’t know whose house was after theirs. Only Ben and a handful of others knew the entire route up to Canada—for the protection of both the stationmasters and the runaways. When she said good-bye to Peter and his mother, she would never know what happened to them. Not knowing if her friends made it safely to freedom was almost more difficult than the fear of being caught. It wouldn’t be safe for them to correspond, nor could she keep her work a secret if she journeyed up to Canada for a visit.

  She prayed that God would reunite her and Marie and Peter in the next life, where they would all be free to worship Him together.

  George and Charlotte were waiting inside the barn beside the farm wagon and two harnessed horses. Filled with mounds of wool blankets, the wagon was almost ready for a delivery to Connersville. All that remained was to load their friends.

  On the floor behind the driver’s seat, George and Charlotte had left a space of about three feet empty of blankets, though a wall of blankets towered on each side of it. In this empty space, a small latch opened a door, and under the door was a narrow crevice that ran the length of the wagon. Her father had hid up to eight fugitives under this floor, but today they had only five and a baby.

  One at a time, her guests climbed up the step of the wagon, crawled over the driver’s seat, and lowered their feet and then their bodies into the false bottom. In spite of the cool night, it would be a hot journey for them. Her father had driven tiny nail holes along the sides and bot
tom of the rig so they’d have enough fresh air to breathe, but they would be well-insulated with the blankets above them and the people on each side.

  Marie was the last one to step over the seat and drop her feet into the hole. She held down her skirt, and as she lay on her back, she scooted her body as far as it would go.

  “That’s my head,” Roger muttered, and she apologized to the man.

  Anna kissed Peter’s forehead and carefully handed him down to Marie.

  Beside the driver’s seat, Anna hung the lantern on the pole, and then she and Charlotte lifted the remaining blankets from the ground and threw them over the seat until the pile covering the trapdoor matched the surrounding piles on the wagon bed. If all went well, no one would suspect that she was doing anything except making an evening delivery for her father.

  Anna stepped down from the wagon and reached for the cape she’d draped over the mahogany trunk along the wall—the beautiful piece her father had brought out to the barn a year ago, after her mother died. She supposed it reminded him too much of her to keep in the house. Anna’s hands drifted over the wood. Nights like these she ached for her mother.

  “She’ll be with you in spirit, Anna,” Charlotte said.

  Anna tied the cloak around her neck. Sometimes it did seem as if she could feel her mother beside her, urging her on, like Marie’s mother had done for her in the swamps.

  Charlotte straightened her cape. “If you rush, they’ll think you’re hiding something.”

  Anna climbed up onto the seat. “I’ll take it nice and slow.”

  “I’ll be praying for all of you,” Charlotte said.

  Anna gave a quick flick of the reins and the horses walked forward, out of the barn and onto the dirt driveway. She drove the team down the hill and then west along the creek that supplied power to her father’s mill.

  Her lantern gave an eerie glow along the path and flickered every time they bumped over the ruts and logs embedded in the road. Stars covered the sky in a brilliant mantle of twinkling lights.