The Underground Railroad(69)
The meeting house amened and sighed. Rumsey tried not to smile at their reaction, the effect of his performance. Cora couldn’t make much out of his poems: a visitation of a magnificent presence, a seeker awaiting a message. A conversation between an acorn, a sapling, and a powerful oak. Also a tribute to Benjamin Franklin and his ingenuity. Versifying left her cold. Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people’s heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.
After the poetry the musicians were set to perform, some players who had just joined the farm. The poet prepared the dancing circles well, intoxicating them with visions of flight and release. If it made them happy, who was Cora to belittle them? They put bits of themselves into his characters, grafting their faces onto the figures in his rhymes. Did they see themselves in Benjamin Franklin or his inventions? Slaves were tools, so maybe the latter, but no one here was a slave. Counted as property by someone far away, perhaps, but not here.
The entire farm was something beyond her imagination. The Valentines had performed a miracle. She sat among the proof of it; more than that, she was part of that miracle. She had given herself too easily to the false promises of South Carolina. Now a bitter part of her refused the treasures of the Valentine farm, even as every day some blessing part came into bloom. In a young girl taking her hand. In her fears for a man she’d come to feel for.
Rumsey closed with an appeal for nurturing the artistic temperament in young and old alike, “to stoke that Apollonian ember in all mortal beings.” One of the newcomers shoved the lectern across the stage. A cue for the musicians, and a cue for Cora. Sybil knew her friend’s ways by now and kissed her farewell. The hall stifled; outside it was cold and dark. Cora left to the sound of the large pews scraping to make room to dance. She passed someone on the path who declared, “You going the wrong way, girl!”
When she got home, Royal was leaning against a post of her porch. His silhouette, even in the dark. “I thought you’d be along once that banjo got on,” he said.
Cora lit the lamp and saw his black eye, the yellow-purple lump. “Oh,” she said, hugging him, putting her face into his neck.
“A scuffle is all,” he said. “We got away.” Cora shuddered and he whispered, “I know you were worried. I didn’t feel like mixing with folks tonight, reckoned I’d wait here.”
On the porch, they sat on the lovelorn carpenters’ chairs and took in the night. He moved over so their shoulders touched.
She told him what he’d missed, the poet and the meal.
“There’ll be more,” he said. “I got you something.” He rummaged in his leather satchel. “It’s this year’s edition, but I thought you’d appreciate it even though it’s October. When I get to a place where they got next year’s, I’ll pick it up.”
She grabbed his hand. The almanac had a strange, soapy smell and made a cracking noise like fire as she turned the pages. She’d never been the first person to open a book.
Royal took her to the ghost tunnel after a month on the farm.
Cora started working her second day, thoughts in a knot over Valentine’s motto: “Stay, and contribute.” A request, and a cure. She contributed first in the washhouse. The head of the laundry was a woman named Amelia who’d known the Valentines in Virginia and followed two years later. Gently she warned Cora against “abusing the garments.” Cora was quick with her labor on Randall. Working with her hands stirred her old, fearful industry. She and Amelia decided that she might prefer another chore. She helped in the milk house for a week and did a stint with Aunty, watching the babies while their parents worked. After that, she spread manure in the fields when the leaves of the Indian corn turned yellow. As Cora bent in the rows she looked out for an overseer, haunted.
“You look weary,” Royal told her one August evening after Lander delivered one of his speeches. Lander’s talk verged on a sermon, concerning the dilemma of finding your purpose once you’ve slipped the yoke of slavery. The manifold frustrations of liberty. Like the rest of the farm, Cora regarded the man with awe. He was an exotic prince, traveling from a far land to teach them how people conducted themselves in decent places. Places so far away they eluded all maps.
Elijah Lander’s father was a rich white lawyer in Boston who lived openly with his colored wife. They suffered the rebukes of their circle and in midnight whispers characterized their offspring as the union of an African goddess and a pale mortal. A demigod. To hear the white dignitaries tell it in their long-winded introductions to his speeches, Lander demonstrated his brilliance from an early age. A sickly child, he made the family library his playground, poring over volumes he struggled to lift from the shelves. At the age of six, he played the piano like a European master. He performed concerts to the empty parlor, bowing to silent applause.
Family friends interceded to make him the first colored student at one of the prestigious white colleges. “They gave me a slave pass,” as he described it, “and I used it for mischief.” Lander lived in a broom closet; no one would room with him. After four years his fellows elected him valedictorian. He skittered between obstacles like a primeval creature who had outwitted the modern world. Lander could have been anything he wanted. A surgeon, a judge. Brahmins urged him to go to the nation’s capital to make his mark in politics. He’d broken through into a small corner of American success where his race did not curse him. Some might have lived in that space happily, rising alone. Lander wanted to make room for others. People were wonderful company sometimes.