American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  “The cellar?” suggested Carolyn.

  “A possibility. But there are the problems of water, the outhouse, and other practicalities. This thing has many factors to consider.”

  “In the meantime,” asked Carolyn, “what should we do with Lucindy’s cousin’s family?”

  “Until we arrive on a strategy, our house will be the simplest solution,” replied Richmond. “You said it—we have plenty of room. We must simply stress the importance of staying out of sight, and that, as hard as it is, the children mustn’t run around outside. We cannot take any chances. Our goal must be to move them on as soon as possible. I am very concerned about detection. Malachi may have been lucky so far. But all it takes is one slipup, one misspoken word, and terrible things could result. We mustn’t become cavalier, but must be extremely watchful and wary.”

  The result of this talk between husband and wife, and a ride later in the day during which Richmond and Seth spoke of many things, and yet another discussion with Malachi, was a sizeable order placed in town for lumber of varying dimensions which was delivered two days after that by Scully Riggs.

  “Hello, Scully!” said Richmond as the wagon rumbled to a stop in front of the barn.

  “What you building, Mr. Davidson?” asked Scully as he got down and helped Richmond untie the ropes around the load. “There’s enough lumber here to build a whole house.”

  “Not quite that!” laughed Richmond. “We are making some major repairs and additions at our Negro workers’ quarters, as well as some work in the barns.”

  The reminder that the Davidson Negroes were no longer slaves turned Scully’s mood sour.

  They had just begun unloading the first of the planks when Seth approached from the house.

  “Hello, Scully,” he said as he walked over to join them. “I haven’t seen you in a while. How have you been?”

  “All right, I reckon,” replied Scully in a sullen tone.

  “They keeping you busy at the station?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t I hear that your father is back at Oakbriar?” asked Richmond.

  “Yeah. Mr. Beaumont put him back on when they went to Washington.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Give your father my regards, and if there is any way I can be of assistance while Mr. Beaumont is at the capital, tell him to be sure and call on me.”

  Scully said nothing. To his list of grievances about these people, he now also had the fact that Veronica had left before he had the chance to pay her the visit he had planned.

  Thomas and Carolyn now came out of the house. With another set of hands, the wood came off the wagon quickly. Carolyn added her own greetings to the son of Leon Riggs.

  “When you are finished, come into the house with the others, Scully,” she said, “and have something to eat. We’ve just taken some fresh bread out of the bake oven.”

  Scully nodded without a smile, and went on silently unloading the wagon with the three Davidson men. When the wagon was empty he climbed back up on the seat, whacked the reins, and rumbled off without another word and without taking advantage of Carolyn’s invitation. Richmond stared after him, puzzled at his change in demeanor, then followed his sons inside.

  Within the week, construction was under way on a new outhouse—closer to the main house and in proximity to a side door that was more easily accessible to the basement inside—as well as one entire new three-room cabin to be added to the Negro village. These new quarters would ostensibly house several single men who had been crowded more close than was comfortable into one of the other cabins. But it would have another distinction over the other buildings of the former slave quarters—a full cellar was already being excavated by hand, over which the cabin would be built, a basement which would have no visible communication or vents to the outside, and which, therefore, once the cabin was completed and the floor in place, would to all appearances not exist at all.

  Such were their initial plans.

  Seth’s brain was already revolving more possibilities should they become necessary, involving the loft above the threshing barn, a disused stairway at the back of the main house that connected all four levels virtually without detection, as well as plans involving one or two tunnels from the basement to the outside. More far-reaching yet were his thoughts regarding one of the caves for which the ridge below Harper’s Peak was known, a cave whose mouth opened onto the former land of Mr. Brown and was therefore said to be filled with the spirits of the Indian dead. A ride about the place with Malachi and Seth’s amazement at learning about the tunnel already being used filled his imagination with many more possibilities.

  What to do with the runaways, not merely where to hide them, was Richmond’s chief quandary. As close to the border as they were, northern Virginia was crawling with bounty hunters. It wouldn’t be as easy as simply sending them on. How many could Malachi’s contact take? Perhaps, knowing that to many whites, especially in a crowd or from a distance, one black looked just about like any other, they could put a few to work temporarily, taking care that their work crews did not give the appearance of multiplying. That, however, could at best be a temporary measure.

  In the present case, within a week their seven visitors were gone and safely in the hands of the conductor who usually met Malachi on the ridge. Where he led them they had no idea. Malachi thought it was to a Quaker home in the adjoining county. But Richmond knew that alternate travel arrangements would eventually have to be made.

  In the meantime, as Greenwood again returned to normal and as they were beginning to wonder if they had overdramatized the potential influx of refugees that would land at their door, in the space of a week, three new arrivals appeared, independent of one another—a young single man of about thirty from Georgia, and a father and daughter who had fled from South Carolina upon overhearing that the girl was about to be sold off as a mate to a black man she had never seen. None of the three had ever heard of Nate Gibbons, Lucindy Eaton, Sydney LeFleure, or Lucindy’s cousin. The single man met Malachi in the woods. The father and daughter saw the weathervane and approached the house in broad daylight. All repeated the same report with astonishing similarity—that there was talk among runaways that there existed a certain plantation in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, above which the wind blew in the horse’s head and where former slaves now worked as freedmen, where blacks in trouble or on the run could find refuge.

  Thirty-One

  Why Wyatt Beaumont and Brad McClellan came to him in the first place was a mystery to Seth Davidson.

  Did they really think he was one of them? Or were they testing him to see how far he would go? He even wondered if the whole thing was a ploy to draw in his father and thus justify reprisals on a much larger scale against Greenwood and all its free blacks? But he had no proof of that.

  When they first came looking for him, he suspected nothing of where it would lead.

  “We’re looking for Seth,” said Wyatt to Maribel where she was sweeping the front porch. They were still sitting on their horses in front of the house when Carolyn appeared a few seconds later.

  “Why… hello, Wyatt,” she said with a smile. “How are you!”

  “Just fine, Mrs. Davidson,” replied Wyatt, without returning the smile.

  “And you, Brad—goodness, I haven’t see you for such a long time!”

  “Mrs. Davidson,” nodded the elder McClellan with similar expression.

  “How are your two families? How are Veronica, Cameron, and your mother doing in Washington, Wyatt?”

  “Just fine—though Cam’s back with me at Oakbriar. He hated it up there. But like I was saying to your darkie here, we’re looking for Seth, Mrs. Davidson.”

  “As far as I know, he and Richmond and Thomas are with the men out on the west thirty acres of the Brown tract. They are putting in some new fruit trees.”

  “We’ll find them,” said Wyatt. He and young McClellan spun their horses around and galloped off.

  “Tell your mothers both hell
o!” Carolyn called after them. No acknowledgment of her words came from the two retreating forms.

  “Dey’s a couple a angry-lookin’ w’ite boys,” muttered Maribel as Carolyn turned back inside. “Dey ain’t up ter no good no how.”

  Carolyn had to admit that both had changed since she had last seen them. Now in their early twenties, they were men now. Neither did she care for the looks in their eyes.

  The two young men found Seth where Carolyn said they would. They approached the work crew across empty fields from behind. At last they reached Seth and his father and Thomas and some of the black men, all with shovels in their hands.

  They reined in, surveying the scene in which they found themselves. Whatever their feelings might once have been toward this family of their neighbors, it was clear that enmity had taken much deeper root in the rising new generation of young Southern gentlemen even than the animosity of their fathers toward their old friend. One glance in their eyes revealed clearly enough that they hated every black he had freed with venom, and, if it were possible, hated Richmond Davidson himself even more.

  “Hello, Wyatt… Brad,” said Richmond in the same friendly tone as his wife.

  “Our business is with Seth,” said Wyatt without smiling. “We need to talk to you,” he said, turning toward Seth.

  “We’re a little involved right now,” said Seth.

  “That’s all right. Come to my place tonight… after supper.”

  Without waiting for a reply, both young men turned their horses around and galloped off.

  “What’s that all about?” asked Richmond.

  “I have no idea,” answered Seth. “I haven’t seen either Brad or Wyatt for six months, and then I only ran into them briefly in town.”

  That evening about 7:15 Seth Davidson rode up the entryway into Oakbriar in the gathering darkness with a strange mingling of sensations. He had not been here since breaking off the engagement, and he had to admit it was a relief knowing he would encounter neither Veronica nor her father.

  What had brought him here in response to Wyatt’s abrupt invitation, he couldn’t have said—probably curiosity. What good could possibly come of it? The expressions on Brad’s and Wyatt’s faces earlier in the day didn’t look like they wanted his help planning a church social. The ten or twelve horses tied up in front of the house told him he wasn’t the only one to have been summoned to whatever this was all about. Immediately he recognized Dusty, Thomas’ favorite mount. No wonder his brother had disappeared right after supper. He tied up Malcolm. Jarvis did not answer the door to his knock, nor were any other blacks anywhere to be seen. After waiting a minute, and hearing voices, he opened the door and went inside.

  “Come in, Seth,” said Wyatt as his neighbor and lifelong acquaintance entered. His tone was considerably more friendly than earlier in the day. Much of his jubilant spirit could be attributed to the fact that beer for the occasion was in no short supply. Most of the twelve or fifteen young men milling about the room had a tall frothy glass in their hand. For several it was their second or third.

  “Have a beer,” said Wyatt. “We are just waiting for one or two others, then we’ll get down to business.”

  “No, thanks,” replied Seth. He glanced about the room, thankful at least that Thomas, where he stood with Cameron Beaumont, was not drinking along with everyone else. The change on the sixteen-year-old Cameron’s face since Seth last saw him was remarkable. He had grown six inches and looked mean and angry. That he and Thomas were to all appearances closer than ever sent a shudder through him. As he made his way about, greeting young men he had not seen in some cases for years, Seth knew almost everyone present, with the exception of one or two new arrivals to the area, each of whom seemed to subtly react the moment the word Davidson was spoken in the various introductions that followed. The scions of every notable landowning family for twenty miles had been invited. The beer continued to flow freely until, some ten minutes later, Wyatt took the floor.

  “All right, everybody,” he called loudly, “I know you’d all rather get drunk than listen to me, but I didn’t provide all this free beer for that. So find a seat or stand if you want. But let’s get this thing going so you can all stagger home before midnight!”

  Seth stood to one side of the room. Most of the others took seats, while a few, like him, leaned against one or another of the walls.

  “Brad and I got you all together to talk about a problem we have around here that is getting worse and worse,” Wyatt began. “That’s runaway slaves—”

  Seth’s hands went clammy. He stole a glance at Thomas, but his brother displayed no reaction to Wyatt’s words.

  “Runaways have always been a problem as long as there’s been slavery,” Wyatt went on. “But with all this abolitionist talk in the North, it’s getting worse all the time. I know we’re not going to solve the problem ourselves—that’s for men like my dad in Washington,” he added with a laugh. “But we can do our part here. And word has it that there are a lot of runaways coming through here. As you know, my dad’s now a senator and he appointed me deputy commissioner in his place. So I have power to do something about the runaways. A fellow from down South called Murdoch who patrols for runaways says there are so many coming through Spotsylvania County that the bounties on them alone could make us all rich. But it’s more important even than that just to stop them. So I need your help, to be my eyes and ears, and to report anything suspicious to me immediately.”

  “Are you talking about organizing a vigilante group, Wyatt?” asked Seth.

  All heads turned toward him, almost as if they had been expecting him to voice some objection.

  “I don’t much care what you call it, Davidson,” said Wyatt, his friendly tone gone. “All I am saying is that we’re going to put a stop to it. We don’t want renegade, runaway, or free blacks thinking they can use Spotsylvania County as some kind of second home.”

  Neither his emphasis of the word free, nor its implications, went unnoticed.

  “And when they try to do so,” he added, “we will make them wish they had never tried to get to the North this way!”

  A few low rumbles of laughter circulated through the room. They were accompanied by evil grins of anticipated delight at what their host might mean.

  “Where does this Murdoch fellow think they’re coming from?” asked Miles Stretton, son of the owner of a plantation about ten miles south.

  “He doesn’t know,” replied Wyatt. “He just says they’ve caught several trying to get north. They’ve all been coming through here. Word is that there’s some kind of safe house somewhere in Spotsylvania County—probably close by.”

  At his words the room went quiet.

  “Where could that be?” asked Stretton.

  “Nobody knows. It might not be true,” said Wyatt. “But my dad says there is a network of religious fanatics called Quakers all the way from Florida to Pennsylvania that help them. So we’ve got to find if there’s a place like that around here. Because for whatever reason, runaways are getting through. If there is such a place, we’ve got to find it and bust it up.”

  “How do we find these runaways?” asked Jared Miller.

  “That’s why I invited you all here,” replied Wyatt. “We have to work together.”

  “We’ll all have to watch and listen to our own slaves,” replied Brad McClellan. “They always get wind of these things. That’s how we find out. Slaves will help other slaves if they get the chance. Whatever’s happening, you can be sure the coloreds around know about it. But they can’t know we’re watching and listening.”

  “What are we supposed to do if we catch them?” asked Noel Perkins, son of Dove’s Landing’s banker, the only nonplantation young man among them, whose father’s wealth more than made up for that fact.

  “Murdoch says that is up to us,” smiled Wyatt. “Most of them have rewards on their heads.”

  He paused and glanced around the room.

  “So… are you all with us? We’
ll have to arrange for communication between us so that at a moment’s notice we can mount a search. Every one of us will have to keep a horse saddled and ready to ride. And of course, no one else must know—this whole thing must be kept in the strictest secrecy.”

  “Why, Wyatt?” asked Brad’s younger brother Jeremy.

  “Because even in the South… there are traitors to our cause—”

  A few heads turned in Seth’s direction.

  As much as he wanted to know where the rest of this discussion would lead, his conscience was by now shouting too loudly to be ignored.

  “Come on, you guys,” he said, glancing at all the faces staring at him, “do we really need to take the law into our own hands? Nothing good results from that.”

  Fifteen or sixteen faces all stared back at him in silence.

  “Do you all think this is the best way?” he said.

  The room remained silent. Wyatt Beaumont could hardly prevent the hint of a smirk coming over his face. He had been hoping for Seth to speak up, for just this reason.

  “I think you might find more support for your pro-darkie sentiments in the North, Seth,” he said.

  “I’m no abolitionist,” said Seth.

  “Your dad’s one.”

  “Not politically, just personally. He’s a loyal Virginian. So am I. I just believe in staying within the law, that’s all.”

  “Stupid Yankee,” muttered one of the boys across the room.

  “Nigger lover!” added Jeremy.

  Again it fell silent. Wyatt Beaumont eyed Seth with a smirk of victory.

  “Well count me out, Wyatt,” said Seth. “I’m not afraid to say no to this little vigilante scheme, even if all the rest of you are.”