Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana

by Melanie Dobson

  There were five outbuildings around the cabin in front of her, still intact in spite of the harsh Indiana winters. As she passed by the chicken coops, she glanced inside each of the wiry cages, and then she checked inside the outhouse.

  The moment she closed the door to the empty root cellar, she heard a muffled cry. Or she thought she did. She glanced around quickly, praying that the sound wasn’t just a door batting in the wind.

  Then she heard the cry again, coming from the smokehouse, and she sprang forward. There, centered in the small brick room, was a shivering bundle of skin and blankets. The instant Peter’s eyes met hers, he let out a loud wail.

  She grabbed him and pulled him into her arms until his cries were broken by a deep cough that erupted from his chest. The blankets were soaked, and she quickly unwrapped him from the soggy mess sticking to his skin.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered as he continued to cough. Cradling him in one arm, she opened Marie’s knapsack, pulled out a clean gown and diaper, and folded his body into the dry clothes. Then she wrapped her shawl around him and pulled him to her chest.

  Thank You, she whispered.

  As she held him close, his cough turned into a terrible wheeze that made him labor for his next breath. He was ill, but thank God, she had found him with some breath still in his body. After doing a miracle to keep Peter alive, surely God wouldn’t let him pass now.

  “I know you miss your mama,” she said gently as she opened Marie’s pack again. “I understand—I miss my mama, too.

  “Your mama would want you to hold on just a little bit longer. She wants you to grow up into a man before you see her again.”

  At the bottom of the pack, she found a bottle filled with milk and twisted off the cap. She had no idea if she should feed a sick baby cold milk, but the alternative seemed even more deadly to her. She wouldn’t let him starve to death.

  She propped the nipple in his mouth, and he sucked hungrily. “You have a good life ahead of you, my friend.”

  He shivered again, and with her cheek placed against his forehead, she felt his burning skin. She had to get Peter home right away.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “We can’t keep him here.” Her father’s voice cracked when he said it, but his words still infuriated her. What were they supposed to do? She couldn’t travel with Peter to Canada now, not while he was so sick. And there was no place else to take him. Did he want her to put Peter back inside that frigid smokehouse and leave him there to die?

  Charlotte lifted the kettle of water out of the fire and poured it slowly into the other end of the tub to mix with the cooling bath water. Anna cradled Peter’s shivering head with one hand and scooped the warm water over his flushed skin, hoping that it would help relieve the chill.

  “He needs to see a doctor,” Anna insisted.

  Her father’s look was filled with sadness. “We can’t take him to a doctor, Anna. It would put his life in jeopardy as well as ours.”

  “But he’s a white baby!”

  “There are handbills posted all over town for a light-skinned baby,” Edwin said. “It wouldn’t take long for someone to guess.”

  Anna poured warm water over him again. “I’m not going to let him die.”

  “I don’t want him to die either.”

  At the table beside them, Charlotte crushed a clove of garlic and mixed it into a small bowl of lard. “This will help.”

  Anna pointed for her father to get a towel that had been warmed by the fire. After he opened it, she lifted Peter out of the water and swathed him in the cotton. As Anna held him to her chest, he rested his head on her bosom, and she knew she would do anything to keep this baby alive.

  “Lay him down on the table,” Charlotte said, and Anna did as she instructed.

  Charlotte uncovered his feet and plastered them with the mixture of lard and garlic before she smeared the mixture on his neck. Anna tucked the blanket over him again and then held him against her chest once more.

  “He’ll need castor oil,” Edwin said, and Charlotte nodded her head. Anna turned away from them and sat with Peter in the rocking chair her father had brought downstairs. Peter’s cough sounded worse than when she had taken him from the smokehouse five or six hours ago, but he wasn’t shivering anymore.

  Charlotte brought over a bottle with a few teaspoons of castor oil and molasses. Anna thought Peter might spit out the potent mixture, but he was so hungry he slurped it up. God help her, if Noah Owens were around, she would want to hurt him like he’d hurt this baby, stealing away his mother and then stripping him of his health.

  “I have an idea,” Charlotte said as she took the bottle.

  Anna patted Peter on the back and rocked him. “What is it?”

  “There is a free couple who live in the colored settlement near Salem,” Charlotte began to explain. “The husband was hurt a few months ago at the grist mill, so he’s home all day, chomping at the bit to do some work, until he goes back to the mill at the first of the year. He’s a fine man, Anna. Loves God and all the people in the settlement. If you could supply him and his wife with food and clothing and medicine for Peter, they may be willing to take him in for a spell.”

  Anna clutched Peter even closer to her, not wanting to let him go.

  “What are their names?”

  Charlotte paused. “We’ll call them the Palmer family.”

  Anna nodded. It would be an answer to prayer if the Palmers could nurse him back to health, but the entire six weeks of his life had been spent going from one house to the next, with different faces and arms rocking him to sleep at night. The only consistent face and voice had been Marie.

  Why couldn’t she keep him here and care for him herself? She couldn’t replace his mother, but she could care for him consistently until he was well.

  “When can we take him?” Edwin asked.

  “I can go visit them first thing in the morning and take Peter with me.”

  “Not yet,” Anna insisted. “He’s not ready to travel again.”

  Her father sat down on a bench. “The hunters will return, Anna, and if they find him here, he may suffer the same fate as Marie.”

  “We’ll hide him in the attic.”

  “One cry is all it will take for them to find the room.”

  Peter sighed against her, the lard and garlic and castor oil relieving his cough for the moment. Marie had chosen the selfless path for her life, risking everything to get Peter away from slavery. Anna had to let him go from her, as well.

  “Charlotte,” she said, her eyes on Peter, “could you send a message up the line through Ben?”

  “Of course.”

  “Please have him tell Adeline Hampshire that I was mistaken about the cargo I misplaced.” She kissed the top of Peter’s head. “Tell her I found the package this afternoon, and we’ll ship it north again very soon.”

  Daniel sat at Joseph’s wide secretary, trying to lob the scattered thoughts in his head onto a sheet of paper. How could a respectable society allow a slave owner to come into its fold, kill one of his slaves, and not suffer the slightest repercussion? They should all rally against Noah Owens and let him and his cohorts know that no matter what the federal government says, no one could tromp into Indiana and murder a colored girl.

  A person wasn’t property, to do with what another man pleased. It was inane, the absurd wording used to justify an evil act. In the government’s wording of the new law, they’d demoralized a human and then criminalized those helping a slave by saying they were stealing property. Apparently there was nothing wrong with damaging your own property.

  Daniel dropped his pen on the desk. How could someone like Anna Brent speak in support of slavery?

  The question had haunted him for two days. Since the wedding, he hadn’t been able to write anything decent for the paper. His thoughts were all jumbled in his head, and they looked even more jumbled on paper.

  The Liberty Era went to press tonight whether or not this final ar
ticle was completed, so he’d escaped his room and his office to try to finish it in Joseph and Esther’s parlor, hoping the words would flow better here.

  Joseph had left an hour ago to care for a patient, and the only thing that flowed through Daniel’s head right now was his agitation toward Anna and his sister. Esther sat near him on a cushioned chair. She had just finished writing a letter, and now she was reading the latest Godey’s Lady’s Book more earnestly than most Christians read their Bibles.

  He picked up his pen and began to write feverishly again, but even he wasn’t swayed by his own words.

  Esther groaned, and he swung around. “What’s wrong?”

  Her face was flushed, but she smiled at him. “Just a small pain.”

  “Is it time?”

  “Oh no.” She laughed, but even that sounded painful. “Not for two more months.”

  He stared at her. “Do you want me to find Joseph?”

  “It’s nothing to worry about.” She fanned her face with the magazine, but he could see the sweat beading on her forehead. “All women have pains here and there.”

  He faced the secretary again, picked up his pen, but even the jumble of words in his mind had disappeared.

  The instant Charlotte walked down into the kitchen after visiting Peter, Anna knew that something was wrong. “Is he still sick?”

  Charlotte hung her cape on a peg. “Gravely.”

  A shiver went through Anna’s body. Peter was dying, and she wasn’t doing a thing to help him recover. “I need to go to him.”

  Charlotte reached for her arm. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “I can hold him.”

  “The Palmers are holding him, Anna.”

  “But I can still go….”

  “No, you can’t.”

  The Palmers may be caring for him, but there had to be something she could do to help. It was wrong—being here in the security of her home while he was so ill. Not being able to relieve his pain. She swung open a cabinet and rummaged through it quickly until she found another bottle of castor oil. “Take this to him.”

  Charlotte set the bottle on the table.

  “What are you doing?” Anna pointed to the oil. “Take it to him right now.”

  “They’ve given him castor oil and onion tea and rhubarb tea to fight the croup,” Charlotte said. “They’ve given him warm baths and kept flannel wraps around his neck since he arrived. He was exposed to the cold for too long.”

  She leaned her head back against the wall. “He needs a doctor.”

  Charlotte nodded sadly, and then changed the topic. “Ben left me a message today.”

  “Any news?”

  “He personally delivered your note to Mrs. Hampshire, and he wanted me to tell you that she was grateful for it.”

  Anna nodded. If something bad happened to Peter, she would never tell the woman.

  “Ben also said he should be delivering two more packages here tomorrow night,” she explained. “And our new signal is a large pot of flowers by the front door instead of a quilt.”

  The bell rang upstairs, and Anna caught her breath at the sound, worried that Simon or another one of the slave hunters could have found Peter’s tracks after all. Even if he had, he could search all he wanted tonight. There was nothing for him to find.

  She asked Charlotte to tend to the fire and walked up the stairs by herself. Out the front window she saw a boy about nine or ten waiting at her door, but she’d learned not to trust anyone no matter how small.

  She slowly opened the door.

  “Are you Miss Brent?” the boy asked.

  She nodded.

  He dug in his pocket and pulled out an ivory envelope. “Doctor and Mrs. Cooley sent you a letter.”

  “Indeed,” she said as she opened it. It was a formal invitation from Esther inviting her and her father to dinner tomorrow night.

  She clutched the letter in her hands. Maybe God had sent an answer for Peter after all.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Anna heard Matthew’s voice that evening before she saw him.

  “Good evening, Edwin,” he greeted her father at the front door. “Is Anna home?”

  “Why, Matthew! Please come in.”

  When Anna stepped out of the parlor, Matthew’s smile made her nervous. He had come for a purpose, and she didn’t think she wanted to know what it was. She motioned to take his hat, but he kept it in his hands. “Something smells wonderful,” he said.

  “Charlotte’s stewing oyster sauce for the veal.”

  Matthew licked the side of his lips. “Are you expecting company?”

  “We were hoping that some company might come right along,” Edwin told him, though he didn’t expound upon whom they were expecting later that night.

  He looked at her instead of her father. “Is that an invitation?”

  “We’d love to have you join us,” she said and held out her hand again to take his coat and hat. He didn’t give either of them to her.

  “I’d like to speak with you first, Anna, if I may.”

  “Okay.” She removed her shawl from a peg and wrapped it around her shoulders so they could talk outside. If their guests should arrive in the next hour, they wouldn’t approach the house with two strangers conversing on the front porch.

  Edwin opened the door for him and knelt to pull the jar filled with flowers back into the entryway. Matthew didn’t seem to notice Edwin move the flowers or shut the door. Instead he sat down on the porch swing and patted the seat. Anna joined his side.

  She didn’t feel nervous beside Matthew, not like she felt when she was near Daniel. Matthew was comfortable, and she always thought she would want “comfortable” in a husband. Yet there was something missing between her and Matthew, and she’d known it for a long time.

  He removed his hat and put it in his lap. “I need an answer, Anna.”

  “To what?” she asked. She didn’t want to sound coy, but she’d already given him an answer to his question about marriage. Twice.

  “I need to know if it’s more important for you to risk being disowned or more important for you to marry me.”

  “I can’t be disowned, Matthew.”

  “Yes, you can.” The charm he’d displayed at the wedding reception had been replaced with irritation. “God doesn’t care where you attend church.”

  She gazed up at the sun slowly passing over the sky. She was certain that God would still love her no matter where she attended Meeting, but in her heart, she was a Quaker. She desired to listen to the Spirit daily and resist the temptation to stray from His Light. No one, especially Matthew Nelson, would force her to change her mind.

  He faced her. “You don’t want to marry me, do you?”

  She glanced down at her hands and then looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry, Matthew.”

  He stopped rocking the swing, but he didn’t face her. “I thought I could either convert or convince you to leave behind Quakerism and be happy as my wife, but all along you’ve been hiding behind your religion because you didn’t want to marry me.”

  She stiffened. “I haven’t been hiding.”

  “I’ve been up-front with you for the past year about my intentions, Anna, but you haven’t been honest about yours.”

  “Both times you’ve asked, I told you I couldn’t marry you.”

  “Because you’re a Quaker.”

  “Because I’m a Quaker....” She swallowed hard. She hated hurting a friend like Matthew. It went against her very being as a woman who loved God and was called to show His love to other people.

  But no matter how much she cared about Matthew, she still couldn’t marry him. In her attempt to minimize his pain, she was hurting Matthew even more.

  “I can’t marry you because I love you like a brother, Matthew, not a husband.”

  When she turned her head toward his in the fading sunlight, the fury that filled his face devastated and frightened her. He didn’t speak, but she didn’t need words to know that he was livid.<
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  She looked away quickly toward the far end of the porch. She was the one to blame for his anger. From the beginning, she should have told him that she could never marry him, but a small part of her had once hoped that maybe Matthew would be convinced in the ways of Quakerism and that spark of love Rachel so clearly had for her husband would one day burn inside her own heart as well.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I haven’t been fair to you.”

  His silence was even more poignant than his words.

  The stillness was broken abruptly by a shuffling noise behind them. She jumped but forced herself to stay facing forward, hoping Matthew hadn’t heard the sound in the bushes.

  Light footsteps ran away from them, toward the back of the house.

  Matthew stood quickly and marched to the side of the porch. He listened, and she prayed that no one would move again. Or speak out. She thought about how Marie had hid in her trees until her baby cried, almost three weeks ago.

  Please don’t let it be a child.

  “It must be an animal,” Anna said.

  His eyes narrowed. “Probably a wolf again.”

  Did Matthew know who was in the bushes? The thought scared her. “I hope not.”

  He took a quick step toward her and lowered his voice. “A group of runaway slaves were spotted near Silver Creek recently.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “One of them hurt a white woman just south of here.” He looked back toward the yard and scanned it as he spoke. “She still hasn’t recovered.”

  “That’s horrible.” She shivered, wondering if his words were true. She’d yet to feel threatened by a runaway, though she’d heard a few stories about people who had been hurt. Those rumors, she figured, were propelled by the same people trying to frighten those who helped slaves.

  “They haven’t caught them yet, but the sheriff is closing in,” he said. “You’ve got to be careful.”

  “I will.”

  He shoved his hat back on his head. “I’ll look around a little before I leave.”

  She stood up and motioned him toward the door. “Would you like to eat dinner first?”