American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  “How did you feed them?… did they never have to stay for more than a short time?… what if the weather was bad or the next conductor was late?” asked Richmond.

  “I had ter use a little imaginashun at times, dat’s true enuf,” chuckled Malachi. “I’d hide dem in one ob dem ol’ Indian caves, or up in the high pasture in da shed dere.”

  “I can hardly believe you were able to find places to keep them without detection!” said Richmond, still shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I eben took dem into da Brown house a time er two—I hope you don’ mind, Mister Dab’son. Dere wuz a fearsome storm las’ winter an’ I had five at once, wiff two real youn’ uns an’ I didn’t know what ter du wiff dem. Dat’s when I foun’ da big room underneath, in da cellar, an’ I kept dem dere till da storm passed, an’ dat’s how I foun’ da tunnel leadin’ ter one ob da caves too. An’ dat’s where I been hidin’ dem eber since—I hope you don’t mind too much, Mister Dab’son.”

  “No… no, of course not, Malachi,” replied Richmond. “There is a tunnel from the cellar under the Brown house leading to a cave?”

  “Yes, suh. It’s dry an’ out ob da way an’ it’s ’bout as good er place ter hide runaways as you cud ax fer.”

  “Well, Malachi… it would seem that many of the questions I had you have already had to deal with. How many people normally come to you asking for help?”

  “Can’t say, Mister Dab’son—sumtimes nobody fo’ a mumf or two. But den I led sum folks up ober da ridge jes’ three nights ago when you an’ da missus an’ Nancy wuz all sleepin’ like babies. But more’s comin’, dat’s what everybody seyz. Dey say hit’s a flood dat’s comin’ norf, an’ gittin’ ter be a bigger flood all da time.”

  Twenty-Seven

  The night was late. A low fire burned before a small circle of six youths who sat around it. All were white and scions of well-known Virginia families. That they had been drinking no doubt heightened the sense of drama associated with the secret meeting called by the one all acknowledged as their leader. Their brains were yet clear enough to know what they did and recognize to some degree its import, though none could have foreseen where it would lead.

  At last twenty-year-old Wyatt Beaumont spoke.

  “My father has named me as his deputy commissioner while he is in Washington,” he said. “As much as I respect my father in many ways, his inaction on the runaway problem is not one I can condone. This is the opportunity we have been waiting for to do something about it ourselves—to break the back of the Negro network once and for all.”

  “What can we do, Wyatt?” asked Brad McClellan. “We’re just… well, not exactly kids, but you know what I mean.”

  “We have the law on our side, that’s what,” replied Wyatt. “We have been dealing with niggers all our lives. It’s no different now, except now we’re going to do it with guns and ropes and by putting them in jail or sending them back to their owners where they belong.”

  “Why us, Wyatt?” asked another.

  “Because I can trust you, and I know you share my feelings about the problem. Just as my dad chose me, I have chosen you to be my deputies,” said young Beaumont. “But no one must know. What we do here, and what I may call upon you to do in the future, must forever remain unknown. Breaking the vow of silence will be punishable by blood. If any one of you is not prepared this night to swear absolute loyalty to our cause, you can get on your horse and leave us now.”

  He paused and looked around at the other five. The light from the flames flickered from their faces.

  “Are we all agreed, then?”

  Each of the five nodded.

  “Then here is the vow of the Brigade of the White League. I want you to each say it after me: Long may the South endure…”

  “Long may the South endure,” they repeated slowly in unison.

  “Death or prison to all runaways…”

  “Death or prison to all runaways.”

  “May ruin come to all who harbor and give them aid or comfort…”

  “May ruin come to all who harbor and give them aid or comfort.”

  “And we dedicate our lives to the rights of freedom for white men everywhere.”

  “We dedicate our lives to the rights of freedom for white men everywhere.”

  “Where did you learn all that?” asked one of the boys when they were done.

  “I overheard my father talking to a man from Alabama. They were talking about a secret society of Southerners dedicated to the cause of slavery. That’s when I decided to start our own brigade right here. And now that we have taken the vow together, you are bound to come when I call for you.”

  “How will we know?”

  “I will arrange a series of signals and a place to meet.”

  “What about others… our brothers… guys like Scully and others around town? They’ll want to join too.”

  “We will use them when we need to, but they must not know of tonight’s vow. Too many loose tongues could bring us down too. Whatever you do, say nothing to Scully. He’s white trash and doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. If anyone else proves worthy to be added to our number, I will decide that myself.”

  Even as he said the words, a cunning idea entered Wyatt Beaumont’s brain that was so unexpected he hardly knew what to think of it.

  A light carriage made its way along a lonely stretch of road deep in the Maryland hills. The young man at the reins knew how to handle himself well enough in a saddle. But the poverty of his boyhood on the streets of New York had taught him to appreciate life’s finer things. The carriage notwithstanding, however, he had foregone his usual expensively tailored attire and was clad in the humble garb of a farmer. If he was seen by the wrong people, he did not want his appearance in so out-of-the-way a place to invite curiosity and comment.

  Suddenly three horsemen galloped out of the woods and onto the road. Immediately he reined in. One of the riders signaled him to follow, then spun his horse around and led the way along the road in the same direction he had been going. He urged his single horse forward and the two other riders followed behind.

  A quarter of a mile farther, they turned onto a narrow track, barely wide enough for the two carriage wheels, that led, by many turnings and up a steep incline, to an abandoned barn and corral.

  Here they stopped again. He was blindfolded. One of the men jumped up beside him and took the reins. Again they bounded into motion. The route this time was similar. They climbed steadily, bouncing over rocks and potholes, until, after another twenty or thirty minutes, they reined in. His blindfold was removed. He found himself facing an imposing man of slender build but great height, whose pale eyes and fierce countenance stared straight through him.

  He motioned him down and led him inside a small log cabin. They sat down across from one another at a rickety wood table.

  “Are you the one they call The Owl?”

  “I am.”

  “My name is Brown—John Brown. I understand you can get me guns.”

  “It is possible. Can you pay?”

  I can. What kinds do you have available?”

  “Whatever you need—carbines, Winchesters, 45s, a range of pistols of various calibers.”

  “Where do you get them?”

  “I have various sources—Lexington, Boston, Cincinnati… I have contacts everywhere.”

  “You don’t buy them through normal channels?”

  “No,” smiled The Owl. “That is why the prices of the people I represent tend to be somewhat higher than what is advertised in the catalogs. But no questions are asked.”

  “That should suit my purposes,” said Brown.

  “Then tell me what you need and I will speak to my contacts. As soon as they are paid we will arrange for delivery wherever you like.”

  “I will draw up a list.”

  The tall man paused, then lowered his voice, as if even here in his mountain hideout, prying unfriendly ears might be listening.

  “There is one ot
her thing,” he said.

  “I am listening,” nodded The Owl.

  “I need whatever information I can get on the disposition of troops at Harpers Ferry and the guard at the federal armory.”

  “When?”

  “Next month.”

  “I will see what I can learn.”

  Some troubles come upon us like sudden thunderbolts from a clear sky, after which life is never the same again. Other difficulties gather like slow-brewing storms whose clouds approach by infinitesimally closer degrees, until a day comes when finally, however long anticipated, the rain of their difficulties at last breaks upon us.

  Seth had seen a speck of darkness on his horizon the night he had ridden away from Oakbriar the previous May after being unknowingly backed into what gradually became an engagement to Veronica Beaumont. He had tried to ignore it. But it had grown steadily in size, inching closer day by day, until now his mental and emotional skies were filled with threatening dark clouds. Not a patch of light was visible anywhere.

  By early November Seth realized the clouds would not go away of themselves. He and he alone could extricate himself from the quagmire in which he found himself.

  Seth left the house and wandered toward the stables. Whenever he thought about trying to clear his head, the first place that came to his mind was Harper’s Peak. He had to get as high as he could, into the fresh quiet air where he could look down on the world of his difficulties with detachment and perspective. How much his rides to that high vantage point with a certain girl from Boston in August contributed to the continual drawing of his soul in that direction in the months since was not a question he wanted to ask right now.

  He stood at the fence and gazed into the pasture. He already knew that for this occasion, only the stallion Malcolm would do. He needed Malcolm’s strength, humility, and clarity of vision. He would saddle him and ride to the peak.

  He whistled and called his name. Twenty minutes later he was on his way.

  He supposed he had been searching his soul ever since the Waterses’ visit. Who could deny that alongside that certain other young lady, Veronica was unbelievably shallow. How could he have allowed himself to get swept into all this without seeing how things really were? Did he want to marry someone he couldn’t talk to about serious things?

  He reached the top of the ridge, his mind going in many directions. It was quiet and peaceful, just what he needed.

  He climbed down from Malcolm’s back and walked about. The words burst forth from him as if they had been building up for weeks:

  “Lord,” he prayed aloud, “what am I going to do! What should I do? What do you want me to do?”

  The simplicity of the appeal in no way diminished its power. His unassuming prayer may indeed have contained the most powerful appeal possible to the human species.

  Seth had grown up under the umbrella of his parents’ faith. It was a faith his father and mother had wrestled through to make their own. But Seth had not yet encountered the birth struggle into his own sonship. He believed. His belief, as he had truthfully communicated it to Cherity Waters, had grown toward depths of personal authenticity. But he had not yet had to fight to transform that belief into trusting faith. Belief is the first step on the stairway of trust that leads to faith. It is a necessary beginning, but only a beginning. The season when Seth Davidson would have to climb that stairway was at hand. And in that upward journey would his own trusting sonship be born.

  In truth, no better environment exists for the nurturing of the tender shoots of faith than under the loving and secure umbrella roof of a father and mother of truth. The so-called testimony that the angels in heaven rejoice at even more than to hear that one lost sheep has been found to rejoin the ninety-nine, is the simple witness: “I came from a home where God was honored as Father and Jesus was trusted as Lord.” It is the finest testimonial possible to the method by which God ordained for his life to be transmitted throughout the generations.

  Yet the umbrella of such an upbringing also casts a shadow out of which those fortunate young men and women must one day emerge in order that the sunlight from that Fatherhood and the obedience of that lordship might shine on their own faces and begin to guide their own life’s footsteps.

  This transition into that high obedient childship is often accompanied by temporary bouts of rough spiritual weather within the human soul. Yet only so do they begin to look up and depend personally for themselves upon their heavenly Father. They emerge from such storms on new and more intimate terms with both heavenly and earthly fathers. For with increasing trust in the former comes increasing respect for the latter. Mothers, too, come in for their share of this heightened awareness of life’s roots and wings produced by such healthy steps toward spiritual independence.

  In praying the few simple words that had proceeded from his mouth, Seth Davidson had taken huge new strides toward his own spiritual manhood. For he had taken the first step toward self-chosen childship. He had placed his affairs, his future, his fate, into the hands of Another.

  No more would he try to “work things out,” as is the common way, on his own. He needed help, and he knew it. He was not afraid to admit it. He was ready to be a child. And as a child, he would emerge a man. He would become a man because he would be a son.

  Almost immediately after his prayer the words from the Lord’s parable came to him:

  I will arise and go to my father.

  He stopped and stood a moment.

  “Was that the answer you would give me, Lord?” he said quietly. “Did you just answer my prayer?”

  Of course, he thought. It was so simple, why hadn’t he seen it all along! God would speak to him through his father!

  Thirty seconds later Seth was again on Malcolm’s back and making for Greenwood as fast as he dared.

  Seth found his father with the men where he had left them earlier, plowing the wheat field harvested two months before in preparation for its winter dormancy.

  Richmond had known for days that Seth was in the midst of a struggle of some kind. He had sensed an hour or two before, when Seth had asked to be excused from the plowing, that it was coming to a head. He turned the plow he had been wielding over to one of the other men, and walked to meet Seth as he approached over the upturned furrows. The expression on Seth’s face was serious.

  “Dad,” he said, “we’ve got to talk.”

  Half an hour later the two men, father and son, were mounted and riding into the hills on the back of two of their favorite horses. As soon as they were out of sight of the fields and buildings, Seth began to unfold his trouble to his father.

  “I’m in a fix, Dad,” he said, “and I don’t know what to do. I’m talking about Veronica—you probably figured that, right? I’m just not sure I really want to marry her. The main reason I am in this pickle is because I didn’t talk to you and Mom at the very beginning. It all just sort of happened. I was stupid, Dad. I guess I thought the situation would blow over, though that’s pretty dumb—engagements don’t just blow over. Or else I guess I thought that I could work it out on my own.”

  He laughed morosely.

  “But obviously I haven’t, have I,” Seth went on. “Maybe I needed your help all along more than I realized. It wasn’t that I didn’t want your help. I just got into the whole thing… sort of by accident. I should have asked for help right at the beginning. I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “You’re asking for it now,” said his father. “Better late than never, as they say.”

  “Yeah, maybe… but I still wish I had been thinking clearly enough to come to you immediately. You would have helped me sort it out on the spot and we could have avoided all this.”

  “Why don’t you tell me how it came about,” suggested Richmond. “Sometimes the best way forward out of a problem is to go back to its origins and see where you went wrong in the first place. The quickest way forward is finding the place where you took the wrong fork in the road so you can go back and take the other one.”

/>   Seth nodded, then recounted the conversation that had taken place between he and Veronica’s father the night he had gone to Oakbriar for dinner. His father nodded as he listened.

  “So you see, Dad, it was all so vague,” he said. “I had no idea he was actually talking about engagement. One minute Veronica and I were just neighbors and friends, the next minute we were engaged. Then she started telling people and word got around… then she told me she and her mother had set a date.”

  Seth shook his head as if unable to believe that any of it had really happened.

  “I almost knocked on your door that night,” he said, “when I came back from dinner to tell you about my talk with Mr. Beaumont. I knew I should have. I guess I was embarrassed, and I just didn’t. I had misgivings even then. I knew something was wrong. But like I say, I was embarrassed… and maybe a little too proud to admit that I’d been a dope.”

  “You never need to be embarrassed with your mother and me.”

  “I know, Dad… but I felt stupid. I should have come to you right then and asked you what to do. And then as time went on, there just never seemed a good time. Sometimes, you know, it’s hard to bring things like that up.”

  “I had the feeling something happened that night,” said Richmond. “You were different after that, weighed down. You haven’t been yourself since then. Well… except when the Waters were here. But after they left, you sunk back into whatever it was.”

  “That noticeable, huh?”

  “To one who knows you as well as I do.”

  “Why didn’t you say something, Dad? Why didn’t you step in and clunk me over the head, and knock some sense into me? Why didn’t you call it off?”

  “Would you have listened?”

  “I hope so.”

  “It’s not always easy to listen to a parent’s advice after you think you’ve done most of the growing up you need to do.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I was being stupid, Dad—you should have told me.”

  “I couldn’t tell you that, Seth, my boy, without you asking for my input and counsel.”