The Underground Railroad(52)

“You’ll get your reward,” the night rider with the beard said. He’d been to the house on the previous search.

“You say, you lummox,” Fiona said. “You said you checked the attic last time, but you didn’t, did you?” She turned to the town to establish witnesses for her claim. “You all see—it’s my reward. All that food missing?” Fiona kicked Cora lightly with her foot. “She’d make a big roast and then the next day it was gone. Who was eating all that food? Always looking up at the ceiling. What were they looking at?”

She was so young, Cora thought. Her face was a round and freckled apple, but there was hardness in her eyes. It was difficult to believe the grunts and cusses she’d heard over the months had come out of that little mouth, but the eyes were proof enough.

“We treated you nice,” Martin said.

“You have an awful queer way, both of you,” Fiona said. “And you deserve whatever you get.”

The town had seen justice served too many times to count, but the rendering of the verdict was a new experience. It made them uneasy. Were they a jury now, in addition to the gallery? They looked at each other for cues. An old-timer made his hand into a cone and hollered nonsense through it. A half-eaten apple hit Cora’s stomach. On the bandstand, the coon-show players stood with their disheveled hats in their hands, deflated.

Jamison appeared, rubbing his forehead with a red handkerchief. Cora had not seen him since the first night, but she had heard every speech of the Friday-night finales. Every joke and grandiose claim, the appeals to race and statehood, and then the order to kill the sacrifice. The interruption in the proceedings confounding him. Absent its usual bluster, Jamison’s voice squeaked. “This is something,” he said. “Aren’t you Donald’s son?”

Martin nodded, his soft body quivering with quiet sobs.

“I know your daddy would be ashamed,” Jamison said.

“I had no idea what he was up to,” Ethel said. She tugged against the night riders who gripped her tight. “He did it himself! I didn’t know anything!”

Martin looked away. From the people on the porch, from the town. He turned his face north toward Virginia, where he had been free of his hometown for a time.

Jamison gestured and the night riders pulled Martin and Ethel to the park. The planter looked Cora over. “A nice treat,” Jamison said. Their scheduled victim was in the wings somewhere. “Should we do both?”

The tall man said, “This one is mine. I’ve made it clear.”

Jamison’s expression curdled. He was not accustomed to ignorance of his status. He asked for the stranger’s name.

“Ridgeway,” the man said. “Slave catcher. I go here, I go there. I’ve been after this one for a long time. Your judge knows all about me.”

“You can’t just come in here, muscling about.” Jamison was aware that his usual audience, milling outside the property, observed him with undefined expectations. At the new tremor in his words two night riders, young bucks both, stepped forward to crowd Ridgeway.

Ridgeway exhibited no bother over the display. “You all have your local customs going on here—I get that. Having your fun.” He pronounced fun like a temperance preacher. “But it doesn’t belong to you. The Fugitive Slave Law says I have a right to return this property to its owner. That’s what I aim to do.”

Cora whimpered and felt her head. She was dizzy, like she’d been after Terrance struck her. This man was going to return her to him.

The night rider who threw Cora down the stairs cleared his throat. He explained to Jamison that the slave catcher had led them to the house. The man had visited Judge Tennyson that afternoon and made an official request, although the judge had been enjoying his customary Friday whiskey and might not remember. No one was keen on executing the raid during the festival, but Ridgeway had insisted.

Ridgeway spat tobacco juice on the sidewalk, at the feet of some onlookers. “You can keep the reward,” he told Fiona. He bent slightly and lifted Cora by her arm. “You don’t have to be afraid, Cora. You’re going home.”

A little colored boy, about ten years old, drove a wagon up the street through the crowd, shouting at the two horses. On any other occasion the sight of him in his tailored black suit and stovepipe hat would have been a cause of bewilderment. After the dramatic capture of the sympathizers and the runaway, his appearance nudged the night into the realm of the fantastical. More than one person thought what had just transpired was a new wrinkle in the Friday entertainment, a performance arranged to counter the monotony of the weekly skits and lynchings, which, to be honest, had grown predictable.

At the foot of the porch, Fiona held forth to a group of girls from Irishtown. “A girl’s got to look after her interests if she’s going to get ahead in this country,” she explained.

Ridgeway rode with another man in addition to the boy, a tall white man with long brown hair and a necklace of human ears around his neck. His associate shackled Cora’s ankles, and then ran the chains through a ring in the floor of the wagon. She arranged herself on the bench, her head pulsing in agony with every heartbeat. As they pulled away, she saw Martin and Ethel. They had been tied to the hanging tree. They sobbed and heaved at their bonds. Mayor ran in mad circles at their feet. A blond girl picked up a rock and threw it at Ethel, hitting her in the face. A segment of the town laughed at Ethel’s piteous shrieks. Two more children picked up rocks and threw them at the couple. Mayor yipped and jumped as more people bent to the ground. They raised their arms. The town moved in and then Cora couldn’t see them anymore.