A Light in the Wilderness (2 page)

1842—K
ENTUCKY

She had imagined the day she would escape; it would be high noon when people least expected them to run, when the dogs lay panting in the Kentucky sun and the patrols rested, not seeking a colored woman making her way to freedom. She’d be fearing for her life. But now, no one chased her. No braying hounds barked; yet her heart pounded.

Here she was, her bare feet ready to leave Kentucky soil; and she was going as a free woman. Letitia patted the parchment inside the bond at her waist. It was secure. Then she pulled the shawl around her shoulders, lifted her tow linen skirt and her only petticoat, and pulled herself up with ease onto the wagon seat beside Sarah Bowman. Not that she was their equal, oh no, she knew that wasn’t so. But she was free and free people rode facing forward. The rough cloth pressed against her legs as she sat.

“All set?” Mr. Bowman turned to his wife.

“As good as I’ll ever be.” The woman held a baby in her arms. She patted Letitia’s fingers, held them for a moment, then withdrew them as though she’d touched a snake. “Maybe you should
ride in back, Tish. Yes, that would be better. Make sure the little ones are settled.”

Letitia hesitated.
Was now the time?

“Letitia?”

She moved then without complaint under the wagon covering, the August heat already stifling, the scent of canvas new to her nose.

“Over!” One Bowman child barked at her sister, who sat on the older girl’s doll. Letitia wiggled her way past the two-year-old who smiled at her even when Letitia lifted her to retrieve the sought-after doll. Like a lily pad on a pond Letitia nestled herself within the array of bags and bedding and other property of the Bowmans. She swooped the toddler into her lap when the child crawled to her, smelled the lavender of the girl’s hair, then pointed so the child would look out the back arch of the opening. Caged chickens cackled their discontent on the other side of the wagon. A hot breeze pushed past them. As Letitia looked out through the wagon’s bow, a thousand memories bled through the tears in her eyes.

She’d miss the Kentucky goldenrod. She wondered what flowers bloomed in Missouri, what life would bring there. It didn’t matter. She was leaving this place as a free woman; she wouldn’t have to be afraid now. She could own firkins, candlesticks, and kale seeds, property that belonged to her. She had papers to show.

Her heart no longer pounded as a woman running. Dust drifted up to scent the warm air. Flies buzzed. The children had settled their claims for space. A slow grin worked its way onto her face, sent a shiver down her bare arms. She brushed at the tears, rested her chin on the toddler’s head, indigo-colored arms soft around the child. “Thank God Almighty,” she whispered. The toddler reached up without looking and patted Letitia’s cheek. Letitia began to sing, a low husky sound. “I gotta right. You gotta right. We all gotta right to the tree of life.” Letitia stared out the wagon back and smiled. A free woman didn’t have to face forward to know she headed in the right direction.

1844—P
LATTE
C
OUNTY
, M
ISSOURI

Letitia preferred the shadows, avoiding the skirmish before her. But the child tugged on her hand and led Letitia to the dust in front of the Platte County courthouse. Men’s voices sliced the air like the whips of a field marse, sharp and stinging.The air was heavy as a wet, wool quilt, yet dust billowed around the two men as it did when bulls scraped the earth. “She was contracted for, fair and square. She failed to do the work!” Letitia knew the speaker, Davey Carson, once of Ireland, now of Carroll Township, Platte County, Missouri. Today, full of consternation. Bushy eyebrows with the tint of auburn formed a chevron of scowl over his nose. “Sure and I did nothing like she says I did. Not a thing. The girl didn’t work, I tell ye!”

Letitia shrank back, grateful his anger wasn’t directed at her. She tugged at the child’s hand to move toward the Platte City store.

“We’ll settle it in court then.” The second man brushed past
Davey, leaving the Irishman like a shriveled pickle in the bottom of a barrel, no one wanting to touch it.

Davey’s red face scanned the disappearing crowd. When his eyes caught Letitia’s, she glanced down. Hot sun brought out sweat on her forehead, intensified the scent of coconut oil and honey she’d used to smooth her crinkly hair. She turned her head to the side. “Let’s go.” She started to reach for the child’s hand.

“I suppose you believe that too,” he accused.

She halted.

“That I’m a madman capable of beating a young lass and misusing her, slave or no! Is that your opinion, woman?”

Was he really speaking to her? She should walk away. She didn’t need to get in an argument with a white man. She was in the town getting buttons and bows for Mrs. Bowman and looking after Artemesia, who had begged to come along. The child stared, slipped her hand inside Letitia’s. It felt wet and warm.

“I gots nothin’ to speak of, Mistah Carson. I gots no opinion. I jus’ stayin’ out of the way.” She did have an opinion, though. He had been kind to her the year before, not long after she’d arrived in Platte County, when she’d asked him to take her money and buy a cow with it.

His voice rose again. “I may be an old mountain man not accustomed to town ways, but I know how to take care of property.” He threw his hands into the air. “I never touched her. Never! It was a trick all along, I tell ye. They told the lass to run away so they’d have their property and my money and I’d be without her labor and my money both.” Davey stomped up the courthouse steps past the black and white cornerstones. Letitia was dismissed.

Each American was due his “day in court,” or so she’d heard. She hoped he was successful in his lawsuit. She wasn’t sure why. Taking sides wasn’t her way. Her heartbeat returned to a steady pace.

In the store, they waited. The mercantile owner had customers to keep happy, and serving those white people first was a given. Letitia spread her hands over the smooth bolts of cloth, the new
dyes tickling her nose. She lifted the lacework on the shelf, fingering the tidy stitches. Irish lace? She shook her head. People were trading their finery for hardtack and flour, getting ready for travel west.

Letitia was going to Oregon too, with the Bowmans. She wasn’t certain how she felt about that. She’d learned the rules of Missouri, showed her papers when asked, endured the sneers and snarls of “free black” as though the word meant stink or worse, a catching kind of poison spread by being present near her breath. But good things had happened to her since she’d been in this state too. She’d earned money helping birth babies, enough to buy a cow. Davey Carson had in fact made the purchase for her, taking her money to acquire the cow that she paid the Bowmans for feeding—along with her own keep.

But she’d heard that the Oregon people wanted to join the states as free. She’d be free there too, and without slavery and its uncertainty hovering like a cloud of fevered mosquitoes. Maybe in Oregon she’d try her hand at living alone. Or if she married and had children, they’d be born free there and no one could ever sell them away from her. What property she had would be hers to keep. Like the cow she owned. She eyed a silver baby rattle on the mercantile shelf. She felt its cool weight. For when . . . if ever again. No, Mr. Bowman said they could only take essentials. A baby rattle wouldn’t qualify.

Still, Letitia chose to go to Oregon with them, chose to help Sarah with the laundry and care of the children. She felt free to call her Missus Bowman whenever they were in public, even though at the log cabin she could call her Miss Sarah, like an older sister. Though they weren’t ever so close as that.

While Artemesia ogled the hard candy counter, Letitia wandered the store, placing a set of needles into her basket, looking at a hairbrush, her face reflected in the silver back. Coal black hair frizzing at her temples beneath her straw hat, damp from humidity heavy as a dog’s breath at high noon. Dark brown eyes set into a face the color of the skinny piano keys. Sadness looked out at her,
reminding her of all those eyes had seen in her twenty-six years. The set was nothing she could afford.

A gust of wind burst sand against the store’s windows. Outside the weather worked itself up into a downpour. Getting home would drench them. She ought to have remembered the slicker for the child, but it hadn’t looked like rain. She didn’t want the child to catch cold.

A sewing box caught her eye. Tortoiseshell with green and blue silk lining the inside. She opened it and saw the ivory spool holders. She could make a false bottom and put her paper there, somewhere safe and secure.

“What can I do for you, Miss Artemesia?” The shopkeeper spoke to the child. He and Letitia were the only adults now, all other customers serviced and gone, scampering through the rain with the umbrellas the shopkeeper loaned them.

“Mistah Bowman will be in tomorrow to pick up these things.” Letitia handed him a list, careful not to touch his fingers even though she wore gloves. “I’s buying the needles.”

“This your mammy, Miss Bowman?” He nodded toward Letitia.

“Yes sir. She’s Aunt Tish.”

“She has money to buy needles?”

Letitia raised her voice. “I has money. Suh.”

He frowned. Letitia handed him the coins. “Bowmans pay me. I’s a free woman.”

He harrumphed. “So you’re all really going to Oregon then, Miss Bowman?”

Artemesia nodded.

“Must say, you’ll be missed, little lady.” He turned to put Letitia’s money in the till. “Half the town seems to be heading west. I see the wagons rolling.” He sighed. “Wouldn’t mind a change of scenery myself now and then. Not sure though that I trust those letters sent back about all the good things Oregon has awaiting.”

“We able to borrow one of your umbrellas, suh? It rainin’ harsh.”

“Should have remembered to bring one.”

“Yessuh, but didn’t see no storms walkin’ in. Don’t want the chil’ getting’ sick.”

He nodded. “Wouldn’t want that on my conscience either. Here you go.”

Letitia didn’t give her opinion of letters sent and received. He wouldn’t care. Few asked her opinion. Miss Sarah didn’t invite suggestions for how to clean the bedrolls of fleas or how to lessen morning sickness. Mr. Bowman acted like she didn’t exist except to help break hemp or butcher hogs. But Davey Carson
had
asked her opinion of his lawsuit, now that she thought about it. She wore a little shame that she’d sidestepped his question, didn’t answer that she found him to be a kind man, unlike what he was accused of. He had treated her as though she was more than a post. That so rarely happened, she’d been shocked and was now surprised at the feeling of warmth arriving on the memory.

Nancy Hawkins handed her husband the wooden peg. “That finishes it.”

“Told you I’d make you a quilt frame out of good Missouri oak. And you doubted.” Her husband of twelve years grinned.

“It’s only been two years in the making.” Nancy ran her hands over the smooth wood.

Zachariah stepped back, surveying his handywork. He looked up at the rafters. “Do you still want it up there?”

“Yes, I want it pulled up out of the way when I’m not using it.”

“Be as easy to store in the shed.”

“I want to lower it myself and not have to get help hauling it in.” She could imagine right now a Contrary Woman pattern or stitching her fifteen stitches to the inch while her friends laughed and told stories.

“Could we work on it later?” He pulled out his pocket watch.

“I don’t see anyone waiting.” She looked out the window. The
small room at the end of their cabin served as his doctor’s office, but she could see if someone rode up. No one had.

“I’ve some apothecary orders to put together.”

She laughed. “You’ll do anything to get out of finishing something, won’t you?” His sheepish look was her reply. “Let’s see if we can’t get it all hung before Laura and Edward wake up. Samuel will help, won’t you?”

Samuel, her eleven-year-old, almost as tall as her, nodded.

“Pounding around in the ceiling will wake them up,” Zachariah warned.

“Go!” She swatted at him and he sidestepped and grinned. “Get the pulley and hemp ropes. We’ll do the rest.”

She picked up two-year-old Edward, who awoke at the sound of the door slamming. She bounced him on her hip while she stirred the beef stew. They would be heading for Oregon this year if it wasn’t for her carrying a child due in October. Though the pregnancy had delayed their trip a year, she’d finally gotten the quilt frame Zach had promised her before they left Iowa, and she intended to use it.

“Here you go.” The iron pulleys clunked on the wooden floor, and Nancy jumped out of the way of the snake of rope that thumped then tangled at her bare feet. “I’ll work on it later. Someone’s at the office door now that I need to tend to.”

Nancy looked out the window. Yes, a man dismounted his horse. He stood tall, wore a fine vest and pants tucked into good leather boots. He walked like a soldier toward the door, straight shoulders, but she didn’t think he’d ever served. “It’s that disagreeable Greenberry Smith. Tell him your wife awaits your critical help.”

“He’s not the sort of man to be concerned about the inconveniences of a woman,” Zach said.

That was true enough. Nancy had been present once helping her husband when Greenberry Smith had brought in a slave needing an amputation because of a foot infection gone untreated. The young slave, maybe in his twenties, had scars on his arms from previous injuries and smelled of rotten flesh. Nancy supposed it was good
that Smith sought medical help instead of simply letting the man die as some slave owners might, especially when the amputation meant his value as a worker would be reduced. She clucked her tongue. Another reason to leave this place. Oregon would be a refreshing change as a free state. Power without love is never just, and slavery was all about raw power.

Nancy prodded Zach toward his office.

Zach nodded toward the pulley and rope. “Don’t go standing on a stool. Most dangerous weapon there is in a house.”

“Samuel and I will be fine.”

Zach left and Nancy pawed through what he’d brought her. “We’ll need a hammer and two iron nails. Can you find those?” Samuel trotted off in search while she put Edward in a corner with a wooden top. “Maryanne, Martha, you watch him, see he doesn’t get underfoot.”

Maryanne, at nine, clucked at her seven-year-old sister and younger brother like a little mother. Four-year-old Laura slept on. A sickly child, she slept most of her days away, but Zach could find nothing wrong with her. Her health was a constant worry, dark circles under her eyes. The girl hadn’t nursed well and Nancy worried what might happen with this next child. Edward had nursed fine; so had the others, but there was always the lesson of Laura.

Nancy dragged the ropes to the section of the cabin where she wanted to house the quilt frame. It would be secured to the ceiling logs. Locating the stool, she lifted the first pulley. She’d need two to hold it to the rafter. She centered the pulleys above her head. Yes, this would be the best place. Samuel handed her the nails and she pounded them in, worked the rope through the pulleys and through the rings on the quilt frame. “Let’s see if we’ve got it working.”

Samuel worked one side and Nancy the other. When the frame hung snug to the rafter, they tied off their ropes at the side logs. She stood back and looked. “Well, isn’t that dandy?” She did a little dance. “Imagine, I’ve done a man’s job.”

Samuel nodded. “You had help, Mother.”

“Yes I did.” She brushed his blond hair, sharing this little triumph. She found she needed to notice small achievements to keep from feeling overwhelmed by the everyday tasks of living.

That’s when she heard the snap of the rope, saw it spin like a wild whip, leaving one end of the frame high at the rafter and Nancy’s side swinging free, close to the floor—next to the pulley that smashed from the ceiling. Martha shouted, Edward cried, Laura startled before letting loose a wail. Nancy saw the knot of rope spun free in the fall as she lifted Laura. The pulley lay beside her. She brought the crying child to her chest, then checked the cheek, a bruise from the pulley already starting to form.
Some mother
I am.

Four days later, on an April morning with wild plums blooming beside the Bowman cabin, Letitia lay in her cot in the children’s room, the scent of pine from the unpeeled logs tickling her nose. A small window gave her the view of the flowering dogwood beyond. The blossoms looked beaten from the steady rains, but this morning promised a clear sky. Dawn yawned in the distance as a bluebird settled on the branch, hanging as precarious and happy as a child lying back on a swing. Letitia curled back into the feather tick. How nice it would be to rise when she was ready and not when someone demanded something from her. She rose. This morning she wanted to get underway with Mr. Bowman no longer giving orders about what had to be left behind.

The children still lay sleeping as she headed to the little house, carrying the evening slop pots with her.

Her personal duties completed, she walked back past the Bowmans’ window and heard Miss Sarah say, “It’s too bad Davey Carson did not prevail. Now he is out both his money and someone to help him cook and clean and tend animals.”

Mr. Bowman grunted as Letitia paused.

“Do you think he harmed the girl?” Sarah Bowman thought she whispered, but she never really did. Her voice carried.

“Who’s to say. She had bruises.”

Letitia heard the ropes of the mattress ache as Mr. Bowman must have risen. Fleshy feet hit the floor. He said something, but Letitia couldn’t hear it. Then “Oregon” but nothing else.

“Oh, I hardly think so.” Sarah had moved closer to the window. Letitia crept down, hoping Miss Sarah wouldn’t see her. “He’s vested in Missouri, no doubt about that.” Then silence and Miss Sarah said, “I’ll raise Tish. I declare, that girl gets lazier every day.”

Letitia hurried past, entering through the outside door to her room. She heard the knock as she set the slop pots down.

“Tish! Don’t forget to put the cream in the churn on the wagon and hang it from the bow. We’ll let it make itself while we roll. And come get my trunk when you’re finished helping the children dress.” Sarah Bowman barked her orders as though Letitia didn’t have a choice whether to follow or not. “Breakfast needs going now too, you know. You’ll earn your wages on this journey.”

Yes, she would earn her wages, though she’d receive none. Mr. Bowman said providing food and transport was payment enough.

“Yessum.”

Her stomach felt root-bound. Letitia washed her face and dressed in a tow linen dress with slub knots. One day she’d spend a little of her earnings on fancy cloth with no little nubbins from a poor spinner, but no sense to spend the money now when she’d be wearing but one or two dresses on the journey west. It was said those clothes would be threadbare by the time they reached Oregon country.

Letitia cinched her belt tight with a jerk, then tied her red kerchief over the tight curls hugging her head. She knotted the cloth at the back of her neck. The morning dew wet against her bare feet, she fast-walked to the shed where Charity, her cow, waited.

Oxen bawled, ready to be freed and moved to pasture. “Not today,” Letitia told them. “Today you is headin’ west with the rest of us.” She scratched behind Charity’s ears and thought of Sarah’s words. What would Mr. Carson do now? He wasn’t a young man, perhaps in his forties. He walked as though his knees were knots.
Seeing him atop a mule, Letitia had thought him tall, but on his own two feet he was maybe five feet seven, shorter than Mr. Bowman but still many inches taller than Letitia.
What will he do?
“Why do I care?” she asked Charity. She bent beneath the cow, pulled the stool under her, and pressed her head into the cow’s side and began to milk. The frothy warm smell rose up in comfort as it filled the wooden pail. The switch of Charity’s tail, her steady stand while Letitia milked, always soothed. She wasn’t certain why she needed soothing today. After all, she was beginning a grand adventure, moving to a place where slavery had never been known, and where even if she was mistaken for a slave she could resist the slurs or charges. She had papers. She could trust the papers.

While she worked, she thought of the young slave girl in contention over Davey Carson’s lawsuit. Letitia had met the girl at the Negro church. Had he abused her? She might have seduced the man. Had justice been served in the suit? Uncertainty settled around Mr. Carson like flies around a carcass. Letitia finished her milking, skimmed the cream, and put it in the cooled churn she drew from the spring. Mr. Bowman fastened the wooden churn onto the side of their wagon instead of overhead as Miss Sarah had told her to do. She wouldn’t disagree, but she’d likely be blamed later. They were heading to Weston on the Missouri and would join there with dozens of others. She wondered how many people of color would make the trip and whether she’d find people to gather with at a campfire. Well, she had Charity now, and at the very least she could talk to the cow when things got tough. And the children. She loved the Bowman children.

“Hurry up, Tish!” Miss Sarah always got short when she was nervous. It was something Letitia had noticed from the time Mr. Bowman brought her home to meet his father and Letitia had been given to the new bride. “I thought you’d be ready by now.”

“Yessum. I’s ready as I ever be. Just gatherin’ up hen fruit.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, they’re eggs. Why do you persist in using those colloquialisms your mother used?”

“Yessum.”

“Well, put your things in the back. Good thing you don’t have much to take. We’re stocked to the top and we still have to pick up flour and rice in Weston. The wagon will be inspected by the master.” She corrected herself. “The wagon master. We’ll all be saying ‘yes marse’ and ‘no marse’ from now on, won’t we, Tish?” She giggled.

Letitia let the sting pass.

Back in her room, Letitia folded her dress, tow petticoats, and an extra shawl. She placed her shoes at the bottom of the carpetbag along with the candlesticks and her belt. She added clean rags and an extra pair of underdrawers. She had a few salves and herbs she pressed into paper cones in a side pocket near the paste of coconut oil and honey mix to tame her hair. Her sewing kit with needles, thimble, and pins she folded and put into a pocket on the other side. Then came a pieced quilt she’d made herself of swaddling clothes and snippets of her son’s hemp shirt. Before placing it into the bag, she pushed the cloth against her nose and inhaled. She could still smell her son, though he was long passed. She once thought she might find Jeremiah but learned the boy had died of typhoid at the home of his new master. Like threads piecing her heart together, this quilt held memories. Into the bag it went. It was essential to her.