Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt (27 page)

“Why not?”

“Her new protectors would hardly know where to send her next, would they? They could point north and say, ‘Head in that direction and mind you don’t stumble over any slave catchers on the way,’ but that’s not very helpful, is it?”

Dorothea gave me a long, searching glance and, after a long moment, finally said, “You’re right. They would not know about others who would help the fugitive. There are many others, but more are always needed.”

And then, in elliptical language that suggested more than it explicitly stated, Dorothea told me how Joanna would know the next safe house on her journey north. Our conversation was oddly restrained for two close confidantes, but necessarily so, for neither knew what one might someday be required to say under oath about the other.

Reader, you will forgive me, I hope, if I do not record those identifying details in these pages. That family’s role in the Underground Railroad is their story, not mine, to share with their own descendants or not, as they see fit.

I told neither Hans nor Anneke what Dorothea had revealed to me, only that I knew where Joanna should go when she departed Elm Creek Farm. They did not press me for details, Hans because he was aware that as few people should know the route as possible, Anneke because she was relieved to be spared the burden of yet another secret.

Her relief was to be short-lived, I knew, for Dorothea’s words lingered in my thoughts:
There are many others,
she had said,
but more are always needed
. One fugitive had found shelter within our home. If others happened to pass our way, I would not deny them our hospitality.

Naturally I could not proceed without Hans’s consent, for although I was the elder sibling, he was master of Elm Creek Farm. It took some impassioned pleading on my part, and heart-felt appeals to the best parts of his nature, but eventually he agreed. He did not agree because knowing Joanna had influenced his opinion of the dispute between Slave State and Free; he persisted in the belief that what did not directly affect him did not concern him. What he did acknowledge was that as beneficiaries of America’s promise of freedom and opportunity for all, we Bergstroms would be remiss if we did not assist others who braved unimaginable dangers and risked their very lives in the struggle to achieve what we now took for granted.

When he made up his mind, he told Anneke his decision. She shot me one accusing look, then returned her gaze to her husband and gave him a wordless nod of acceptance. I wished he had asked her for her consent rather than merely telling her how things would be, but it could not be undone, and I allowed myself to believe the result would have been the same regardless.

From that day forward, whenever we did not anticipate visitors, whenever the winter weather was such that a clothesline strung outdoors would not raise suspicions, we hung Anneke’s Underground Railroad quilt and waited for a knock on the door in the night.

Joanna had been with us a month when the knock finally came.

It was shortly before dawn. I started at the sound, instantly awake with a pounding heart, and leapt from my bed. I threw
on my dressing gown and hurried downstairs, pausing only to rap upon Joanna’s door and warn her to hasten to the hiding place. Hans was not a second behind me as I opened the outside door to discover two figures shivering in the cold.

We beckoned them inside, and as I stoked the fire and prepared a meal for them, Hans took his rifle and went to search for pursuers. By the time he returned, Anneke had come down-stairs to help me to tend to the newcomers, and Joanna, assured by the lack of uproar that it was safe to leave her hiding place, had joined us—but rather than take a place by the fire with the other guests, she began to help me with the cooking, without a word and as naturally as if she had been doing so for years.

The arrivals were two men, escaped from the same tobacco plantation in South Carolina. After they were warmed and fed, they told us something of their lives in captivity, and though I think they spared us the most gruesome details, their brief accounts were horrific enough to convince me that no risk was too great to help them toward freedom. Anneke’s bleak silence, and the courteous manner in which she addressed the fugitives, so different from the skittishness she had first displayed toward Joanna, told me she agreed.

But something else also occupied Anneke’s thoughts. “They think she’s white,” murmured Anneke when the others could not overhear, nodding toward the two men, and to Joanna, who wore my dress and worked alongside us as one of the family.

Taken aback, I studied the men surreptitiously and soon concurred with Anneke’s observation. Perhaps because her skin was indeed quite light, or perhaps because the ugly scar on her face drew attention away from her features, the two newcomers did not see a fellow runaway in Joanna. Perhaps they did not look upon her long enough to discern her true heritage; upon her first appearance, each man had glanced at her scar, then quickly diverted his gaze as if he did not wish to appear rude. Once
Joanna’s dialect exposed her, however, there was a subtle shift in the men’s address—mild surprise, which they well concealed, was followed by a new warmth, a familiarity, that did not enter into their voices when they spoke to Anneke or me.

Throughout that day, as the men slept in the beds we made up for them in the nursery, I pondered Joanna’s inadvertent duplicity and wondered if we might not somehow use it to help her elude capture when she resumed her journey north.

The men left shortly after dusk, clad in some of Hans’s stout winter clothing and carrying bread and cheese enough to sustain them until the next station. Joanna watched them go, her longing to accompany them plain upon her face. Then her hand absently went to her gently swelling abdomen, and she turned away from the window.

Not a week later, another knock woke us in the night; two days after that fugitive’s departure, another arrived to take his place. With each escaped slave who found shelter beneath our roof, our confidence grew, and the Underground Railroad quilt appeared more frequently on our clothesline.

We grew confident—perhaps overconfident. Thus one late night when a man and a boy of about eight years pounded frantically on the door, we were rudely restored to our senses. As we beckoned them inside, the man told us through labored breathing that the slave catchers were not far behind.

I stood stock-still for a moment, and so it was Anneke who sprung into action. “This way,” said she briskly, guiding them upstairs. I quickly looked over the first floor for any sign of Joanna or the new arrivals, and followed the others upstairs. Anneke and I helped the fugitives into the hiding place, then returned to our bedrooms, to feign sleep.

Perhaps a half hour passed before the baying of dogs and a second pounding interrupted the quiet night. I prayed God would make me a good liar as I followed Hans and Anneke downstairs. My brother pulled open the door, and to my dismay and astonishment, we found ourselves facing the same two slave catchers who had disturbed us during our first autumn at Elm Creek Farm. This time, each held a yelping bloodhound by the collar.

Without waiting for us to ask their purpose, the first man demanded entry to our home. “We’re in pursuit of two runaway n——s, a man and a boy,” said he. “We know they came this way.”

Annoyed, Hans said, “That’s why you woke my family in the middle of the night? I thought the devil himself was after you.”

“Let us in, g—d—it,” snarled the other. The dogs barked and panted, and would have leapt past Hans and inside if they had not been restrained.

“Did you check the barn?” inquired Anneke, her eyes wide and innocent. “Last time, you said sometimes runaways hide in the barn.” She turned to Hans, stroking her abdomen as if comforting the child within her womb. “These runaways won’t hurt us, will they?”

Hans put his arm around her protectively. “Don’t you worry, dearest.” Then he glared at the men as if to shame them for frightening a poor defenseless woman.

But they were not deceived. “Yes, we surely did check your barn, and we checked L.’s cabin, too,” said the first man. “And that is where we discovered this.”

He held out a worn shawl of linsey-woolsey, filthy and torn. “That’s mine,” said I, and took the slave cloth from him. “My goodness, when I think of how long and hard I searched for this—”

“We found footprints, too,” interrupted the second.

“Of course you did,” said Hans, with perfect bemusement. “We used to live there.”

“Likely we left many other things behind, besides,” said I.

The first man addressed Hans. “If you don’t allow us to search your house, I’ll come back with the law, and we’ll force our way in.”

“Not with those filthy curs, you will not,” I declared. “I will not have them tracking mud all over my clean floors.”

“Surely they wouldn’t bring the dogs inside, would they?” Anneke shrank back, putting Hans between herself and the door. “Hans, please say they won’t.”

“As you can see, my wife is as terrified of dogs as my sister is of a dirty floor,” remarked Hans dryly. “I suppose I could let you in if it will get rid of you, but the dogs stay outside.”

The second man fumed. “See there?” said he to his companion. “They’re afraid. They know what the dogs will find.”

“Oh, come now,” said I. “Be reasonable. Would your own wives allow those muddy paws in their homes? Surely our house isn’t large enough to conceal someone from two experienced slave catchers, dogs or no dogs.”

I do not know if my caustic remark injured their pride or if they thought of their own wives and decided my obsession with a clean floor was quite typical for my sex, but, muttering complaints and curses just loud enough to be heard, they tied the hounds’ leashes to a post. Hans opened the door and waved the men in, and they wasted no time searching through the first level as we Bergstroms sat in the front room and pretended we feared nothing more than the loss of a few hours’ sleep. “Don’t track dirt into the baby’s room,” called Anneke after the two men as they trooped upstairs. Then we all fell silent.

We listened to their boots on the floorboards as they moved from room to room above us. We knew the precise moment they
entered the sewing room. I could scarcely breathe, silently willing the fugitives to be as still as stone, waiting for a triumphant shout of discovery that would announce our undoing.

But the shout did not come.

The footfalls moved from room to room a second time, and then, after what seemed an eternity, we heard them coming slowly, reluctantly, down the stairs. Hans shrugged at the men as if to say he had tried to prevent them from wasting their time, but the two men were unmollified. So great was the first man’s fury that he could scarcely strangle out a vow that he would be watching us, and that one day he would catch us helping runaways and see us hanged for it.

“Threaten my family again and I’ll kill you,” said Hans.

He said it as easily as if he had made killing men his life’s work. The two slave catchers frowned, but they did not look as if Hans’s threat troubled them. Still, they left our home in great haste, and soon even the sound of their horses’ hooves on the road faded into the distance.

“Fools,” said Hans. “They don’t hang a man for helping slaves.”

Anneke gave me a look that suggested she found little consolation in that fact, and she set herself down heavily in the nearest chair.

“Joanna,” said I, remembering with a jolt her own condition, and how three fugitives were sharing a refuge meant for one.

I raced upstairs to the sewing room to find it in a shambles, as if two slave catchers had spitefully strewn fabric and quilts about when their search turned up nothing amiss. Picking my way through the mess, I went to Anneke’s sewing machine and pulled it away from the wall, revealing a minuscule crack in the new plaster behind it. I slipped my fingernails into the crack and tugged, and away came the makeshift door. “They’re gone,” said I. “It’s safe to come out.”

Joanna was the first to emerge, looking faint. I helped her back to bed as the man exited, but upon my return, I found him sitting beside the hole in the false wall, earnestly appealing to the young boy to come out. The boy refused, and I cannot say I blamed him. In the end, we agreed to allow him to remain inside as long as he wished; we left the wood-and-plaster covering off, but nearby, where it could quickly be replaced if need be.

“I apologize for the cramped accommodations,” said I as I made up a bed for the man on the floor beside the opening, where he wished to remain, to comfort the boy. “That space was once a closet, but even then it was little more than a nook. Hans plastered over the door remarkably well, but he had no way to enlarge the space.”

“We hide out in worse places than that,” said he. “Once we hide in a pigsty, another time an outhouse. Slave catchers be low types, but even they don’t like that stink.”

“Imagine that,” said I, dryly. “I would have thought them perfectly suited for such a stench. Their souls reek of the filth of their occupation.”

He chuckled grimly in agreement, and I felt my fear lifting, replaced by a relief so complete I felt light-headed. Our secret alcove had passed its first test, and I was greatly reassured that the fugitives who sought shelter with us would be safe within our walls.

But as I drifted off to sleep, I thought of the young boy who feared capture too much to quit the hiding place. If not for an inexplicable quirk of fate or the unfathomable caprice of God, he could have been born in the North and free. He could have been Anneke’s child, and Anneke’s child could have been born into slavery.

When I read over these lines they seem no more than ramblings, although at the time I felt I had touched on something
profound. I cannot trace the path my thoughts traveled that night, but in my fatigue and my fear, I saw quite plainly a sameness linking all of us entangled in this great conflict, so that I felt at once both guardian and fugitive, both slave and freeborn. Slavery made slaves of us all, it seemed to me, imprisoning those with dark skin in the iron shackles of injustice, those who owned slaves in chains of sin, and those of us complacent in our freedom with the heavy yoke of obligation to help our enslaved brethren.