The Last Runaway

by Tracy Chevalier

  In the cornfield the woman turned south. When Honor did not follow, she stopped. “You comin’ or what?”

  “We should be going that way.” Honor pointed at the pole star. “Toward Oberlin.”

  The woman shook her head. “I jes’ come from Oberlin. From the woman in the red house—make one fiery stew. Who said to stay away from you. Now I start to understand why,” she added. “Don’t you understand? I’m goin’ south, not north. Already been in the north.” She crossed back to Honor. “You don’t remember me, do you? I expect we all look alike to you.” She clicked her tongue. “Well, I tell you somethin’: white folks look the same to us too.”

  “I do remember thee,” Honor whispered. “Thee left water by my bed when I was ill.”

  The woman’s face softened. “I did.”

  “But I don’t understand—why is thee going south?”

  “My children. See, after I got caught I ran away again first chance I got. I even stopped at your farm one day, got the victuals you left under the crate. This time I made it to Canada. But once I was there, I couldn’t stop thinkin’ ’bout my girls, and worryin’ ’bout them. It felt good up there, the freedom. Ain’t nobody tellin’ you what to do. You make your own decisions, where you live, what you do, how you spend the money you earn. You earn money! And livin’ with other black folk, it’s—well, it’s like you livin’ with your Quaker kind. It feel right. I want my children to feel that too. So I’m goin’ back for them.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Virginia.”

  “But that is far! What if thee is caught?”

  “If I is caught I’ll jes’ wait till I can run again. That the thing about slavery. They needs you to work, they can’t always be lockin’ you up. You wait long enough, you always find a time to run. That’s why I don’t worry if I get caught. They take me back to Virginia, and I’ll run again, with my children this time. I done tasted freedom now. I always gon’ be wantin’ that taste again.”

  Honor felt as she had done when playing a game with her brothers and sister, where they blindfolded her and spun her round, and when she removed the blindfold, she discovered she was facing a completely different direction from what she thought. It was as if she were standing in the corn, and it had turned around her 180 degrees, so that north was south and south north. She had been expecting to walk to Mrs. Reed’s in Oberlin, then make her way northwest to Sandusky, a town on Lake Erie where she could get a boat across to Canada. That was what fugitive slaves did. Now, though, she would have to go the opposite way, or go north without a guide.

  “So where you goin’?” the black woman asked.

  “I . . .” Honor had no idea where she was going. She had only considered what she was running from, not what she was running to. Those were usually two different directions. It was not really a question of her going north or south; she was not a black slave escaping from unjust laws. Hers was more of an east-west decision: known or unknown territory. “I will go with thee to Wellington. From there I will decide.” She preferred a companion going south to a night in the woods alone, tasting metal.

  “Come on, then, if you really comin’.” The woman began crossing the field, weaving through the rows of corn. A breeze had sprung up, rattling the stalks naturally so that the fugitives did not have to worry so much about the noise they made. Still they went slowly, Honor stumbling in the dark.

  At the edge of the corn they dropped into a ditch and lay there for a time. Honor was not sure why, and asked. “Waitin’ till it feel right,” was all the woman would say.

  Eventually Donovan rode by, on his own this time, seeming to taunt them by slowing down on the road near to where they lay, then speeding up again.

  “He know we ’round here somewhere,” the woman said. “He can feel it. But he’s confused, ’cause he don’t know I—we—headin’ south. Thinks it should be north, even though his sense tellin’ him otherwise. We jes’ got to wait him out.”

  Donovan returned a few minutes later. Stopping his horse, he called out, “Listen here, Honor Bright. I know you’re out there with that nigger. I tell you what, I’ll strike a bargain with you. Give yourself up and I’ll let you go wherever it is you’re goin’. Your husband asked me to find you—even said he’d pay good money—but I don’t care ’bout him or his money. You wanna run away from him, I ain’t gonna stop you. I always knew you wouldn’t take to the Haymakers. He told me you ain’t spoken since that nigger died. Well, you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. Just throw a rock at me so I’ll know you’re out there, and I’ll find you.”

  The runaway watched Honor, the whites of her eyes flashing in the dark. Honor shook her head to reassure her.

  After a minute, Donovan began to laugh. “Listen to me, sittin’ out here on my horse talkin’ to myself. Guess you’ve made me crazy, Honor Bright.”

  He turned and rode north. Honor wondered how many other fields he would stand next to and repeat his offer.

  The black woman was glaring at her. “What’s with that slave catcher? You friends with him? You leavin’ your husband for him?”

  “No! No. I’m leaving because—because I don’t share the same views as my husband’s family.”

  The woman snorted. “That ridiculous. You don’t have to agree ’bout everything with the people you live with.”

  “They forbade me to help runaways.”

  “Oh.” The woman clicked her tongue.

  They remained in the ditch for a long time. The sky was filling with stars.

  “All right. We go now,” the woman said. “He lookin’ for us toward Oberlin, makin’ his little speech to you ever’ now and then.” She chuckled, and led the way into the woods. With every step Honor expected to feel a hand on her shoulder or a shout from behind. But he did not come.

  It was much cooler now; not cold, but dew was falling, and Honor pulled her shawl around her. They tramped through the woods, Honor tripping at times, the woman steady and quiet.

  The other side of the woods was bounded by a field shorn of its oats. They could not cross it, for they would be easily visible, even without a moon. Instead they went further east, away from the road, to another wood, where they turned south again. Now that they were away from the road and from Donovan, Honor thought they might be able to relax. But the woman hurried on, fearful of cropped fields that could easily be ridden across. “He’ll be crisscrossin’ every field to the north,” she said, “till he realize we not there. Then he’ll come this way.”

  “He may go west,” Honor reasoned. “North and west are where runaways go—not south and east.”

  “Them slave hunters got a sense makes ’em good at guessin’ where a runaway is. Otherwise they be out of a job. He’ll turn up again tonight—I can guarantee it. But I gots a sense too.”

  “How does thee do this every night? And all alone?” Honor shivered, thinking of the cold metallic pressure of the night.

  “You get used to it. Better to be alone. This”—the woman waved her hand at the woods around them—“this is safety. Nature ain’t out to enslave me. Might kill me, with the cold or illness or bears, but that ain’t likely. No, it’s that”—she pointed toward the road—“that’s the danger. People’s the danger.”

  “Bears?” Honor looked around.

  The woman chuckled. “Most bears scared o’ you. They ain’t gon’ bother you, ’less you get ’tween them and they children. ’Sides, ain’t no bears round here. Got ’em in the mountains, where I’m goin’. Got to scare me some bears to get to my children. All right now, we can go.” The woman seemed to be obeying some silent signal only she could sense.

  They crept and stopped, crept and stopped. At one point they came upon water—the Black River, Honor suspected. The runaway did not hesitate but waded in, holding her bundle above her. Honor had no choice but to follow, emerging cold and sodden on the other side. “You’ll dry off soon,” the woman said.

  In the pre-dawn darkness they reached the edge of We
llington. This would be the hardest part, Honor thought: getting to Belle Mills’s in the middle of town without anyone seeing them. Already she could hear dogs barking at farms around them.

  The runaway seemed less worried. “You know where the lady’s shop is?” she said.

  Honor patted her bonnet. “She made this for me.”

  The woman nodded. “Thought so. Good. All you got to do is go up to her door and knock. You a free woman—can’t nobody snatch you off the street. Even that slave hunter can’t do that.”

  “What about thee?”

  “I ain’t comin’ with you.” At Honor’s panic, the woman gazed at her, holding her eyes. “It’s too dangerous right in town with the alarm up. He’d catch me here; I can feel it. Don’t you worry now; I got you close enough you don’t have to be scared no more. You can walk right on up the road—don’t have to hide in the woods with the bears. See, it ain’t so dark now.”

  Honor looked around. There was a dimness in the east that made the darkness less heavy. Soon she would be able to see to walk more easily. “But where will thee go?”

  “I’ll hide myself away. Ain’t gon’ tell you. Better you don’t know so the slave hunter can’t get it out of you. You go on now, ’fore some o’ these dogs come out an’ find us. Got to get me to some water—break the trail so they don’t come after me.”

  Honor knew she was right. “Wait.” She opened her bundle and handed over all of her food, the penknife, and most of the money. Then she took off her gray and yellow bonnet and held it out.

  “Oh.” The woman touched the yellow lining. “This too nice for me.”

  “Please. I would like thee to have it.”

  “All right.” She started to put it on over her red kerchief.

  “Wait—thee should have my cap too. Let me have thy kerchief.” I will use it for the quilt, she thought.

  With the cap on and the bonnet tied tight under her chin, the woman looked from the side like a white woman. “Thankee,” she said. “Now, you best go.”

  Honor hesitated. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Go on, find your way.”

  “God go with thee.”

  “And thee.” The woman smiled. “Look at me, wearin’ a bonnet an’ talkin’ like a Quaker.” She turned and walked into the woods, the darkness taking her away.

  * * *

  He was waiting for her outside Belle Mills’s shop, leaning so still against the corner of the building that Honor didn’t notice him until she had raised her hand to knock on the door.

  “What you doin’ with your head uncovered, Honor Bright? And where’s that nigger?”

  “I do not know,” Honor could honestly respond when she recovered from her fright.

  “Why are you wet? You been wadin’ in the river? She showed you all her nigger tricks, did she?”

  Honor glanced down at her skirt in the dawn light. She thought it had dried, but saw now that it was once again sopping.

  “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh.”

  Belle Mills’s Millinery

  Main St.

  Wellington, Ohio

  September 4, 1851

  My dear parents,

  Do not be alarmed by a stranger’s hand: Belle Mills is writing this letter for me, as I am too weak to sit up for long. I wanted you to know immediately that you are grandparents now, to Comfort Grace Haymaker. She was born three days ago with Belle and an able Wellington doctor in attendance. She is beautiful. I am tired but joyful.

  For the moment it is best to write to me in Wellington.

  Your loving daughter,

  Honor

  This part I write from myself, though Honor don’t know it because she and the baby are asleep now. I don’t know if she’s written to tell you she’s broken with her family. First she gave them the silent treatment, which I guess is the kind of punishment a Quaker would come up with. Then she ran away and is staying with me.

  She can be silent all day long like no one else I ever met. I’ll tell you one thing, though: birthing that baby made her yell loud as any other woman, so loud her throat is sore now. Even Dr. Johns was surprised, and he’s heard some yelling in his time. But it was good to hear her voice loud, even if it came from pain.

  You’re her family, so maybe you can talk sense to her. She needs to figure out what to do. She can stay with me for a time, but I’m dying. Liver. It’s slow but it’s happening. She don’t know that, and don’t need to. She’s got enough on her plate. Eventually, though, I’ll be gone and this store will be turned over to my brother, and you don’t want her staying here then. That would be a disaster.

  I’ll tell you another thing for free: Honor won’t do no better than Jack Haymaker—not in Ohio, anyway. She wants the perfect man she’s going to have to go back to England to find him. Maybe he’s not even there.

  Baby’s crying—time for me to stop.

  Yours ever faithful,

  Belle Mills

  Comfort

  HONOR WAS FINALLY beginning to appreciate rocking chairs. They were everywhere in America: on the front porches of almost every house, in corners of kitchens, in the parlors of travelers’ inns, outside of saloons, in shops by the stove. Only Friends Meeting Houses—and churches, Honor suspected, though she had not been inside one—did not have them.

  Before Comfort’s arrival, she had always been suspicious of them: the rocking seemed to her an aggressive sign of leisureliness. The constant rhythm set by someone else bothered her when she was sitting near an occupied rocker. Americans demonstrated their own rhythm in a much more public way than the English, and it did not seem to occur to them that others might not care for it. Indeed, Americans often went their own way with little consideration for how others felt: proud of their individuality, they liked to flaunt it.

  When Honor visited other Faithwell families, she had always chosen a straight-backed chair, saying it was better for the sewing she brought with her. Really, though, she did not want to rock in front of others and impose her internal rhythm on them.

  Once Comfort was born, however, Honor discovered how soothing rocking could be, for baby and mother. She often sat with her daughter in the rocker by the stove in Belle’s shop, nursing or letting her sleep in her arms. Customers smiled and nodded at her, and seemed not to mind.

  Perhaps, Honor thought one day, it is not that Americans are so wedded to individual expression, but that we British are too judgmental.

  Given the violence with which she entered the world—the lengthy pain, the blood, the pushing and screaming that turned Honor briefly into an animal—it was perhaps not surprising that Comfort Haymaker was a vocal baby. She had corn-flax hair and her father’s blue eyes, but was small like her mother, and her tiny stomach filled and emptied quickly. She cried, was fed, slept for an hour, and then cried again to be fed, cycling through this infant rhythm all day and all night. Honor had never had such an insistent demand made on her, not even when nursing Grace through her final illness. For a time she was so exhausted she could do little more than doze with Comfort between feeds.

  If she had been at the Haymakers’, Honor would have felt no guilt, for new mothers were expected to convalesce for several weeks. But at Belle’s she felt conspicuously idle, especially when she came down to sit in the shop rather than lie in the bedroom that had been given over to her. Belle seemed unbothered by either the crying or the idleness, but Honor insisted on doing what sewing she could when Comfort slept, though in her fatigue she kept unthreading her needle and sewing crooked seams.

  Comfort soon grew used to her mother rocking her in the chair, and would wake and cry when Honor tried to transfer her to the quilt-lined basket Belle had lent her. Honor herself became tearful from exhausted frustration. Mother would know what to do to get her to sleep, she thought. Or Judith Haymaker.

  Belle watched her struggle with the crying baby. “She needs a cradle,” she remarked pointedly.

  Honor pressed her lips together and said nothing. The day after Comfort wa
s born Belle had sent word to the Haymakers, and Jack had come to visit.

  Honor was surprised by how glad she was to see him. When he held his daughter in his arms, gazing proudly on her sleeping face, Honor got that feeling she had when she was sewing together patchwork pieces, and saw that they fit. “She has thy hair, and thy eyes,” she said. They were the first words she had spoken to her husband in months.

  Jack smiled, looking relieved. “It is good to hear thy voice.”

  Honor smiled back. “And thine. I have missed thee.” At this moment, she meant it.

  “I have made the baby a cradle. Mother says—” Jack stopped. “She can sleep in it when thee comes back to the farm.”

  Honor felt her shoulders rise, and as if in response, Comfort began to cry. Jack had to hand her back, and the feeling of being a family was broken.

  “Honor, why did thee run off?” he said. “I was so worried. We all were.”

  Honor was positioning Comfort so that she would latch on to her breast. The initial sucking was so painful she caught her breath.

  “It was irresponsible,” Jack continued. “What if the baby had come when thee was out in the woods, alone and far from anyone? You both could have died.”

  “I was not alone.”

  Jack frowned at the reminder of the runaway.

  Though tempted to retreat back into the silence of the past months, Honor resisted. “I would like to name her Comfort,” she said. “Comfort Grace Haymaker.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Jack to bring the cradle here?” Belle demanded when he had left. She must have been listening.

  “It is his mother’s bargain. The cradle is ready for her, but only if I return to them.”