The Last Runaway (24 page)

The planks that made up the walkways along Main Street ran out south of Mill Street, and Honor picked her way through the heavy clay that sucked at her boots and turned the hem of her green dress gray. Toward the junction with Mechanics Street she heard shouts of raucous laughter and paused, trying to look as if she were being held up by mud. She had forgotten about Wack’s Hotel.

Oberlin’s founding principles of religious fervor, simple living and hard work made it a dry town, but Wack’s Hotel was just outside the Corporation line, where the laws did not apply. Run by Chauncey Wack, a pro-slavery Democrat, it was the only place in Oberlin where liquor and tobacco were available, and though most Oberlinites were teetotal, there was always a core of visiting drinkers to keep Wack’s in business. Several of them were lounging now on the porch facing the street, taking advantage of the fair weather. Among them was Donovan, leaning back in a chair. Honor caught her breath when she saw him. He was smiling at her, and toasted her with a whiskey bottle. She suspected he had been watching her progress all the way down Main Street.

Though she had not seen him during the winter, with the resumption of runaway traffic he had begun riding again along the track by the farm and lifting his hat at her if she was on the porch or in the yard. Each time she tried and failed to remain unaffected, her pulse beating hard in her throat. It occurred to her now that if she was not going to help runaways, they would stop coming to Faithwell and there would be no need for Donovan to make his visits. Already his reappearance had Judith muttering and Jack angry. I must do the honorable thing, she thought. For the baby; for the family.

She pulled in her stomach, though she knew that, only a few months’ pregnant, there was little yet to show. Then she began to walk toward him, clutching her shawl tight. As she approached the hotel, Donovan’s porch companions greeted her with jeers and catcalls. Honor stood still and waited for them to die down. “Donovan, I would like to speak with thee,” she said, her words renewing the shouts.

“Do you, Honor Bright. That makes a change. I thought you hated the sight of me.” Donovan let his chair drop to the ground and stood. “What do you want to talk about?”

Honor gestured toward the road. “Let us walk for a bit.”

Donovan looked a little embarrassed—whether from the attention of a woman or the feeling that for once he was not in charge of their encounter, Honor was not sure. However, he came down the steps to join her, shaking off the whistles and coarse comments about what Honor might do to him and he to her. Honor tried not to listen but walked purposefully along the road ahead of him, stopping only to let a wagon pass so that it would not splash her.

When they were far enough from the hotel that the men had lost interest, Honor slowed so that Donovan could walk at her side. By now he had recovered his composure and seemed amused. “What’s this all about?” he said. “You never wanted my company before. Haymaker startin’ to bore you? That didn’t take long. What—”

“I want to speak to thee about my involvement with runaway slaves,” Honor interrupted so that she would not have to hear his remarks descend into the crudeness he was accustomed to.

“Ha! You admit it, then. Course I was always sure you was hiding niggers, but it’s nice to hear you say it.”

“My husband’s family—my family—does not approve, and I do not want to go against their wishes. So thee does not need to come to our farm any more. There will be no one hiding there.”

Donovan raised his eyebrows. “Just like that, you’re stopping?”

“There have been no runaways over the winter, and only a few since. I will not start again.”

“What about your principles? I thought you hated slavery and wanted all niggers to be set free.”

“I do. But my family is concerned about the law, and I want to respect their wishes.”

“I’ll tell you what the Haymakers are concerned about, Honor Bright: keeping you in your place. They don’t want a woman who’s gonna think for herself.”

“That is not true,” Honor said, but didn’t defend the Haymakers further. She herself felt she was not telling the truth, though she was not exactly lying either.

They had reached the tract of land being cleared for the railroad line, where a narrow strip of trees—mostly ash and elm—had been cut down. Honor studied the stumps still waiting to be extracted, extending as far as she could see. “Why have they done that?” she asked. Around each stump a trench had been dug and filled with water.

“Water softens the wood so it’s easier to dig out,” Donovan explained. “They’ve left it like that for a time and gone to work farther along the line, toward Norwalk.” He gestured west.

They stood side by side, looking out over the highway of stumps, Honor wondering at the fact that she felt more at ease with Donovan than with the Haymakers, even though he was not a Quaker and his beliefs ran so counter to hers. He accepts me as I am, she thought. That is why.

Donovan scooped up a handful of pebbles. “Listen, Honor,” he began, throwing them one by one so that they bounced off the stumps. “You ever want to give it up and come with me, I’d stop what I was doin’. I could do somethin’ else. Work on the railroad, maybe.” His words were halting, as if he were embarrassed to say them. “We could go west. Bet I’d make you happier than Haymaker.”

What surprised her was that she could imagine it, even with a man like Donovan. There is a good man in there, she thought. “I do not doubt that thee could change,” she said aloud, “but I am carrying Jack’s child.”

Donovan grunted and spat in the street. “Was wonderin’ when Haymaker and you would get around to it.” His expression remained stiff, but it felt to Honor as if a door had been shut.

She would have liked to stand there for longer with him, looking at the stumps, but Donovan turned and began to walk back to town, and she had to follow. For a moment she felt sorry for him. He was willing to change, but clearly needed someone to change for. Now it would not happen. She watched his tall broad back ahead of her, and held back a sob.

At Wack’s, Honor insisted he not accompany her farther. “I have errands,” she said. She did not want him to see her going to Mrs. Reed’s.

Donovan removed his hat, held it to his chest and bowed extravagantly. “Fare thee well, Honor Bright. I might come past the farm now and then anyway for old times’ sake, to see you’re keepin’ honest. I won’t stop, though—promise.” He replaced his hat and hopped onto the porch, catching up a bottle as he did. By the time she had turned to continue on her way, he was leaning back in his chair once more, pulling hard at the whiskey.

* * *

A dogwood tree was blooming in front of Mrs. Reed’s house, its white, four-petal blossoms tinged with pink. Honor stood admiring the delicate flowers; it was the one American tree she wished she had grown up with. The small front garden was brimming with flowers: the left of the front path was purple with periwinkle, larkspur and violets, while on the right there grew yellow daffodils and primroses. The violets in particular were surprisingly dense, some a bright blue, others paler and dog-toothed. Honor could imagine Mrs. Reed reaching down to pick a handful for her hat. Most other front gardens when planted with flowers looked both formal and artificial. Judith Haymaker, for instance, had put in daffodil and hyacinth bulbs so that they came up in rigid rows, a sight English women would have smiled at. While plentiful, Mrs. Reed’s flowers had a randomness about them that reminded Honor of coming upon primroses or anemones in the woods. They were just there, as if they always had been. It took real skill to remove the gardener’s hand from the garden.

She stood looking at the flowers until she knew she could delay no longer, then stepped onto the porch and knocked on the front door, which was peeling with white paint. There was no answer, though she could smell onions, and heard the distant clank of pots.

As she stepped back from the porch to look up at the house, a movement caught her eye, and she turned toward the neighboring house, similar to Mrs. Reed’s but brown, with dirt where her flowers grew. An old black man she had not noticed before was rocking in a chair on the porch. He was grinning at her, showing all gums and no teeth, and pointing around the back. It was then Honor noticed the dirt path scuffed into the crabgrass. Following it, she spied through the open back door a figure moving about inside. When Honor called out, the figure stopped, and after a moment Mrs. Reed appeared. She was not wearing her straw hat, but a red kerchief wrapped around her head. Her spectacles glinted in the light so that Honor could not read the expression in her eyes. “What you doin’ here, Honor Bright?” She glanced around. “Git inside ’fore someone see you.” She pulled Honor in and shut the door behind her.

It became immediately clear why the door had been left open. Honor’s eyes filled with tears from the concentrated sting of a large skillet of frying onions. She pulled out a handkerchief to stanch the stream. “I’m sorry—the onions . . .”

Mrs. Reed did not move to stir the onions, but crossed her arms over her chest. “What you doin’ here?” she repeated, her lower lip pushed out by her frown.

Honor finished wiping her eyes, though they soon watered again. She took a deep breath. “I have come to tell thee I will no longer be able to—to help. I am sending word to those directing runaways to me that I cannot hide them or feed them any longer. I felt thee should know as well.”

Mrs. Reed did not react except to turn back to her onions, which gave Honor a chance to glance around the kitchen. She had never been in a Negro’s house before and did not know what to expect.

Mrs. Reed’s kitchen was much smaller than the Haymakers’, as was the whole house, which appeared to consist of two rooms downstairs and two up. This was to be expected—farmhouses were generally bigger than houses in towns. Unlike the Haymaker kitchen, which was light and orderly, with clear surfaces and a pantry lined with even rows of jars, this kitchen was dark and cluttered, full of the smell of hot oil and spices and the suggestion that something was just about to catch at the bottom of the pot. The range was old and smoky, its surface spattered with oil and the remnants of past stews. The shelves on either side of the range were full of open jars of pepper and salt and cayenne, scattered bay leaves and sprigs of rosemary, bowls of dried leaves and twigs Honor did not recognize, sacks of cornmeal and flour, and bottles full of dark sauces dripping down the sides. Overhead hung a string of dried chili peppers that could not have come from Ohio. Though the arrangement appeared chaotic, Mrs. Reed herself did not. Indeed, the white apron she wore over her dress was still white and free of splashes, remarkable given the hissing of the onions and the large pot bubbling at the back of the range.

Mrs. Reed picked up the heavy pan of onions. “Get you that wooden spoon,” she instructed, jerking her head toward the equally jumbled kitchen table. She held the skillet over the pot, her forearms straining with the weight. Honor fumbled with the spoon and scraped at the onions so that they dropped into the pot to join a stew of stringy chicken and tomatoes.

“Thankee.” Mrs. Reed set down the skillet, reached for a handful of chili peppers, and crumbled them into the stew. Then she wiped her hands on her apron before removing her fogged spectacles and wiping them too, a gesture so familiar as to be almost unconscious. She must wipe those spectacles ten times a day, Honor thought.

There was an awkward pause. “Anything else you want to tell me, or you done?” Mrs. Reed said, picking up the sack of cornmeal and two eggs from a basket at her feet. “Git that bowl over there.” She nodded at an earthenware bowl on the sideboard. “Jes’ dump them walnuts on the side. They too old and bitter to eat now. Don’t know why I saved ’em all this time.”

Honor did as she was told, wondering if Mrs. Reed would ask why she had made her decision. The black woman did not seem particularly interested. “I’m carrying a child,” she said, to explain further.

Mrs. Reed scooped two handfuls of cornmeal into the bowl, reached for the sack of flour, and added some to the cornmeal. “Are you, now.” She glanced sideways at Honor. “Guess you a little bigger than before. Still a little thing, though.” She cracked two eggs into the cornmeal and flour, took a small pan off the range, poured the contents into the bowl, and began to beat. “Bring that jug over here. No, not the milk, the buttermilk. Pour some o’ that in while I’m stirring. That’s enough! Don’t want it as wet as that. Git me another handful o’ cornmeal, and another egg.” Mrs. Reed ordered Honor about with ease, as if used to running a kitchen. “Now, get me three, no, four pinches from that jar. That the sody.”

As Honor dropped four pinches of baking soda into the batter, a baby began to cry in the other room. “Damn, baby girl woke early,” Mrs. Reed muttered. “That my granddaughter. You go and get her for me, will you? I got to get this in the oven right now or it won’t never be ready in time. She in there.” She gestured toward the front room.

Honor hesitated. She should get back to Adam’s store where she was meeting Jack. And she still had to give Belle’s letter to the stage that went to Wellington daily. But the baby’s needy wail cut through such thoughts, and it was impossible to say no to Mrs. Reed—so impossible that Honor knew if asked she would have to continue to help runaways. But Mrs. Reed was not asking that.

There was only a ribbon of light from the window to see by as Honor crept in, and before going to the baby she pulled open the curtains. As sunlight flooded the room, the baby turned her head from the pile of bedclothes she was lying on, caged in by a variety of wooden chairs. She caught sight of Honor, widened her glistening eyes, and added a high-pitched scream to her crying. She was a plump baby, with tight black ringlets, fat cheeks and a bow-shaped mouth. As Honor approached her she rolled over in terror and began flailing arms and legs like a turtle caught on a rock. Five or six months old, Honor thought. Old enough to roll over but not to sit up or crawl. She thought back; that meant Mrs. Reed’s daughter was pregnant when she had her wedding dress made. Honor hoped there had been enough material.