The Underground Railroad

SUPPER was held outside the meeting house, the biggest building on the property. Legend had it that they put it up in a single day, before one of the first big gatherings, when they realized the assembled no longer fit inside Valentine’s farmhouse. Most days it served as a schoolhouse. Sundays, a church. On Saturday evenings the farm got together for a common meal and diversions. Masons who worked on the courthouse downstate came back hungry, seamstresses returned from daywork for local white ladies and put on their nice dresses. Temperance was the rule except for Saturday night, when those with a taste for spirits partook and had something to think about at the next morning’s sermon.

The hogs were the first order of business, chopped on the long pine table and covered in dipney sauce. Smoky collards, turnips, sweet potato pie, and the rest of the kitchen’s concoctions sat in the Valentines’ nice dishes. The residents were a reserved bunch, save for when Jimmy’s barbecue came out-prim ladies used their elbows. The pit master lowered his head at every compliment, already thinking of improvements for the next roast. In a deft maneuver Cora tugged off a crispy ear, Molly’s favorite, and presented it to the girl.

Valentine no longer kept count of how many families lived on his land. One hundred souls was a sturdy number to stop at-a fantastic figure by any measure-and that didn’t account for the colored farmers who’d purchased adjacent land and got their own operations going. Of the fifty or so children, most were under the age of five. “Liberty make a body fertile,” Georgina said. That, and the knowledge they will not be sold, Cora added. The women in the colored dormitories of South Carolina believed they knew liberty, but the surgeons’ knives cut them to prove otherwise.

Once the hogs disappeared, Georgina and some of the younger women took the children to the barn for games and sing-alongs. The children didn’t sit still for all the talk at the meetings. Their absence placed the stakes of the discussions into relief; ultimately, it was for the young ones that they schemed. Even if the adults were free of the shackles that had held them fast, bondage had stolen too much time. Only the children could take full advantage of their dreaming. If white men let them.

The meeting house filled. Cora joined Sybil in a pew. Tonight was to be a subdued affair. Next month after the shucking bee, the farm would host the most important gathering yet, to address the recent debates about picking up stakes. In advance, the Valentines had reduced the Saturday-night entertainments. The pleasant weather-and the warnings of the coming Indiana winter, which scared those who’d never seen snow-kept them occupied. Trips to town turned into dallying expeditions. Social calls stretched into the evening now that so many colored settlers had put down roots, the advance guard of a great migration.

Many of the farm’s leaders were out of town. Valentine himself was in Chicago meeting with the banks, his two sons in tow now that they were old enough to help with the farm’s accounts. Lander traveled with one of the new abolitionist societies in New York, on a speaking tour of New England; they kept him busy. What he learned during this latest excursion into the country would doubtless shape his contribution to the big meeting.

Cora studied her neighbors. She’d held out hope that Jimmy’s hogs would lure Royal back in time, but he and his partners were still engaged in their mission for the underground railroad. There was no word from their party. Gruesome reports reached the farm concerning a posse that had strung up some colored troublemakers the previous night. It had happened thirty miles downstate, and the victims supposedly worked for the railroad, but nothing specific on top of that. A freckled woman unfamiliar to Cora-so many strangers these days-carried on about the lynchings in a loud voice. Sybil turned and shushed her, then gave Cora a quick hug as Gloria Valentine stepped to the lectern.

Gloria had been working in the laundry of an indigo plantation when John Valentine met her. “The most delicious vision these eyes ever beheld,” Valentine liked to tell the new arrivals, drawing out delicious as if ladling hot caramel. Valentine didn’t make a habit of visiting slavers in those days, but he’d gone in on a shipment of feed with Gloria’s owner. By the end of the week he had purchased her freedom. A week after that they wed.