The Underground Railroad

“That’s a technicality,” Sam said. White families packed up and flocked to South Carolina for opportunities, from as far as New York according to the gazettes. So did free men and women, in a migration the country had never witnessed before. A portion of the colored were runaways, although there was no telling how many, for obvious reasons. Most of the colored folk in the state had been bought up by the government. Saved from the block in some cases or purchased at estate sales. Agents scouted the big auctions. The majority were acquired from whites who had turned their back on farming. Country life was not for them, even if planting was how they had been raised and their family heritage. This was a new era. The government offered very generous terms and incentives to relocate to the big towns, mortgages and tax relief.

“And the slaves?” Cora asked. She did not understand the money talk, but she knew people being sold as property when she heard it.

“They get food, jobs, and housing. Come and go as they please, marry who they wish, raise children who will never be taken away. Good jobs, too, not slave work. But you’ll see soon enough.” There was a bill of sale in a file in a box somewhere, from what he understood, but that was it. Nothing that would be held over them. A confidante in the Griffin Building had forged these papers for them.

“Are you ready?” Sam asked.

Caesar and Cora looked at each other. Then he extended his hand like a gentleman. “My lady?”

She could not prevent herself from smiling, and they stepped into the daylight together.

The government had purchased Bessie Carpenter and Christian Markson from a bankruptcy hearing in North Carolina. Sam helped them rehearse as they walked to town. He lived two miles outside, in a cottage his grandfather had built. His parents had operated the copper shop on Main Street, but Sam chose a different path after they died. He sold the business to one of the many transplants who’d come to South Carolina for a fresh start and Sam now worked at one of the saloons, the Drift. His friend owned the place, and the atmosphere suited his personality. Sam liked the spectacle of the human animal up close, as well as his access to the workings of the town, once the drink loosened tongues. He made his own hours, which was an asset in his other enterprise. The station was buried beneath his barn, as with Lumbly.

At the outskirts Sam gave them detailed directions to the Placement Office. “And if you get lost, just head for that”-he pointed at the skyscraping wonder-“and make a right when you hit Main Street.” He would contact them when he had more information.

Caesar and Cora made their way up the dusty road into town, unbelieving. A buggy rounded the turn and the pair nearly dove into the woods. The driver was a colored boy who tipped his cap in a jaunty fashion. Nonchalant, as if it were nothing. To have such bearing at his young age! When he was out of sight they laughed at their ridiculous behavior. Cora straightened her back and held her head level. They would have to learn how to walk like freemen.

In the following months, Cora mastered posture. Her letters and speech required more attention. After her talk with Miss Lucy, she removed her primer from her trunk. While the other girls gossiped and said good night one by one, Cora practiced her letters. The next time she signed for the Andersons’ groceries, she would write Bessie in careful print. She blew out the candle when her hand cramped.

It was the softest bed she had ever lain in. But then, it was the only bed she had ever lain in.

Miss Handler must have been raised in the bosom of saints. Even though the old man was utterly incompetent with regards to the rudiments of writing and speaking, the teacher was never less than polite and indulgent. The entire class-the schoolhouse was full on Saturday mornings-shifted at their desks while the old man sputtered and choked on the day’s lessons. The two girls in front of Cora made cross-eyes at each other and giggled at his botched sounds.

Cora joined the class in exasperation. It was nigh impossible to understand Howard’s speech under normal circumstances. He favored a pidgin of his lost African tongue and slave talk. In the old days, her mother had told her, that half language was the voice of the plantation. They had been stolen from villages all over Africa and spoke a multitude of tongues. The words from across the ocean were beaten out of them over time. For simplicity, to erase their identities, to smother uprisings. All the words except for the ones locked away by those who still remembered who they had been before. “They keep ’em hid like precious gold,” Mabel said.

These were not her mother’s and grandmother’s times. Howard’s attempts at “I am” consumed precious lesson time, already too short after the work week. She had come here to learn.