The Underground Railroad

They lingered by the road after their lunchtime meal, the white men smoking pipes by the horses and reminiscing an escapade. For all his talk of how long he had hunted her, Ridgeway displayed no urgency about delivering Cora to Terrance Randall. Not that she hurried toward that reunion. Cora stutter-stepped into the burned field. She’d learned to walk with irons. It was hard to believe it had taken this long. Cora had always pitied the downcast coffles marching in their pathetic line past the Randall place. Now look at her. The lesson was unclear. In one respect she had been spared an injury for many years. In another, misfortune had merely bided time: There was no escape. Sores puckered on her skin beneath the iron. The white men paid her no mind as she walked to the black trees.

By then she had run a few times. When they stopped for supplies, Boseman was distracted by a funeral procession rounding the corner and she made it a couple of yards before a boy tripped her. They added a neck collar, iron links dropping to her wrists like moss. It gave her the posture of a beggar or praying mantis. She ran when the men stopped to relieve themselves at the side of the trail and made it a little farther that time. She ran once at dusk, by a stream, the water making a promise of movement. The slick stones sent her tumbling into the water, and Ridgeway thrashed her. She stopped running.

– 

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.