The Underground Railroad(57)
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THEY seldom spoke the first days after leaving North Carolina. She thought the confrontation with the mob had exhausted them as much as it had exhausted her, but silence was their policy in general—until Jasper came into their midst. Boseman whispered his rude suggestions and Homer turned back from the driver’s seat to give her an unsettling grin on his inscrutable schedule, but the slave catcher kept his distance at the head of the line. Occasionally he whistled.
Cora caught on that they were heading west instead of south. She’d never paid attention to the sun’s habits before Caesar. He told her it might aid their escape. They stopped in a town one morning, outside a bakery. Cora steeled herself and asked Ridgeway about his plans.
His eyes widened, as if he’d been waiting for her to approach. After this first conversation Ridgeway included her in their plans as if she had a vote. “You were a surprise,” he said, “but don’t worry, we’ll get you home soon enough.”
She was correct, he said. They were headed west. A Georgia planter named Hinton had commissioned Ridgeway to return one of his slaves. The negro in question was a wily and resourceful buck who had relatives in one of the colored settlements in Missouri; reliable information confirmed Nelson plied his trade as a trapper, in broad daylight, without concern of retribution. Hinton was a respected farmer with an enviable spread, a cousin of the governor. Regrettably, one of his overseers had gossiped with a slave wench and now Nelson’s behavior made his owner an object of ridicule on his own land. Hinton had been grooming the boy to be a boss. He promised Ridgeway a generous bounty, going so far as to present a contract in a pretentious ceremony. An elderly darky served as witness, coughing into his hand the while.
Given Hinton’s impatience, the most sensible course was to travel on to Missouri. “Once we have our man,” Ridgeway said, “you can be reunited with your master. From what I’ve seen, he’ll prepare a worthy welcome.”
Ridgeway didn’t hide his disdain for Terrance Randall; the man had what he called an “ornate” imagination when it came to nigger discipline. This much was plain from the moment his gang turned down the road to the big house and saw the three gallows. The young girl was installed in hers, hooked through her ribs by a large metal spike and dangling. The dirt below dark with her blood. The other two gallows stood waiting.
“If I hadn’t been detained upstate,” Ridgeway said, “I’m sure I’d have scooped up the three of you before the trail got cold. Lovey—was that its name?”
Cora covered her mouth to keep in her scream. She failed. Ridgeway waited ten minutes for her to regain her composure. The townspeople looked at the colored girl laying there collapsed on the ground and stepped over her into the bakery. The smell of the snacks filled the street, sweet and beguiling.
Boseman and Homer waited in the drive while he talked to the master of the house, Ridgeway said. The house had been lively and inviting when the father was alive—yes, he had been there before to search for Cora’s mother and come up empty-handed. One minute with Terrance and the cause of the terrible atmosphere was evident. The son was mean, and it was the kind of meanness that infected everything around. The daylight was gray and sluggish from the thunderheads, the house niggers slow and glum.
The newspapers liked to impress the fantasy of the happy plantation and the contented slave who sang and danced and loved Massa. Folks enjoyed that sort of thing and it was politically useful given the combat with the northern states and the antislavery movement. Ridgeway knew that image to be false—he didn’t need to dissemble about the business of slavery—but neither was the menace of the Randall plantation the truth. The place was haunted. Who could blame the slaves their sad comportment with that corpse twisting on a hook outside?
Terrance received Ridgeway into the parlor. He was drunk and had not bothered to dress himself, lounging on the sofa in a red robe. It was tragic, Ridgeway said, to see the degeneration that can happen in just one generation, but money does that to a family sometimes. Brings out the impurities. Terrance remembered Ridgeway from his earlier visit, when Mabel disappeared into the swamp, just like this latest trio. He told Ridgeway that his father had been touched that he came in person to apologize for his incompetence.
“I could have slapped the Randall boy twice across the face without losing the contract,” Ridgeway said. “But in my mature years I decided to wait until I had you and the other one in hand. Something to look forward to.” He assumed from Terrance’s eagerness and the size of the bounty that Cora was her master’s concubine.
Cora shook her head. She had stopped sobbing and stood now, her trembling under control, hands in fists.
Ridgeway paused. “Something else, then. At any rate, you exert a powerful influence.” He resumed the story of his visit to Randall. Terrance briefed the slave catcher on the state of affairs since Lovey’s capture. Just that morning his man Connelly had been informed that Caesar frequented the premises of a local shopkeeper—the man sold the nigger boy’s woodwork, supposedly. Perhaps the slave catcher might visit this Mr. Fletcher and see what developed. Terrance wanted the girl alive but didn’t care how the other one came back. Did Ridgeway know that the boy came from Virginia originally?
Ridgeway did not. This was some sort of jousting about his home state. The windows were closed and yet a disagreeable smell had moved into the room.