The Underground Railroad

Her rescuers’ cart was a short walk down the road from Ridgeway’s camp. She and Justin hid under a thick blanket in the back and they charged off, at dangerous velocity given the darkness and the uniformly poor quality of Tennessee roads. So agitated by the fight were Royal and Red that they forgot to blindfold their cargo for several miles. Royal was bashful about it. “It’s for the safety of the depot, miss.”

That third trip on the underground railroad began beneath a stable. By now a station meant a descent down impossibly deep steps and the revelation of the next station’s character. The owner of the premises was away on business, Royal told them as he untied the rags from their eyes, a ruse to hide his part in their enterprise. Cora never got his name, nor that of the town of departure. Just that he was another person of subterranean inclinations-and a taste for imported white tile. The walls of the station were covered with it.

“Every time we come down here, there’s something new,” Royal said. The four of them waited for the train at a table covered with a white tablecloth, sitting in heavy chairs upholstered in crimson. Fresh flowers jutted from a vase and paintings of farmland hung on the walls. There was a cut-crystal pitcher full of water, a basket of fruit, and a big loaf of pumpernickel for them to eat.

“This is a rich folk’s house,” Justin said.

“He likes to maintain a mood,” Royal answered.

Red said he liked the white tiles, which were an improvement over the pine boards that had been there formerly. “I don’t know how he put them up himself,” he added.

Royal said he hoped the help had a still tongue.

“You killed that man,” Justin said. He was numb. They had discovered a jug of wine inside a cupboard and the fugitive drank with abandon.

“Ask the girl if he had it coming,” Red said.

Royal grabbed Red’s forearm to stop the man’s trembling. His friend had never taken a man’s life before. The premise of their misadventure was enough to get them hanged, but the murder ensured grim abuse before they swung. Royal was taken aback when Cora told him later that she was wanted for murder in Georgia. He recovered and said, “Then our course was already set from the moment I laid eyes on you, on that dirty street.”

Royal was the first freeborn man Cora had ever met. There were many freemen in South Carolina who’d relocated for the so-called opportunities, but they’d served their time as chattel. Royal took in liberty with his first breath.

He was raised in Connecticut; his father was a barber and his mother a midwife. They were freeborn as well, hailing from New York City. On their orders, Royal apprenticed with a printer as soon as he was old enough to labor. His parents believed in the dignity of the honest trades, envisioning the generations of their family branching into the future, each more accomplished than the last. If the north had eliminated slavery, one day the abominable institution would fall everywhere. The negro’s story may have started in this country with degradation, but triumph and prosperity would be his one day.

Had his parents realized the power of their reminiscences on the boy, they might have been more reserved in their stories of their native city. Royal lit out for Manhattan at eighteen, and his first sight of the majestic city from the rail of the ferry confirmed his fate. He took a room with three other men in a colored boardinghouse in Five Points and hung a shingle as a barber until he met the famous Eugene Wheeler. The white man started a conversation with Royal at an antislavery meeting; impressed, Wheeler told him to come to his office the next day. Royal had read of the man’s exploits in the newspaper-lawyer, abolitionist crusader, bane of slavers and those who did their dirty work. Royal scouted the city jail for runaways the lawyer might defend, ran messages between enigmatic persons, and distributed funds from antislavery societies to relocated fugitives. By his official induction into the underground railroad, he had been its instrument for some time.

“I oil the pistons,” he liked to say. Royal placed the coded messages in the classifieds that informed runaways and conductors of departures. He bribed ship captains and constables, rowed shivering pregnant women across rivers in leaky skiffs, and delivered judges’ release orders to frowning deputies. In general he was paired with a white ally, but Royal’s quick wits and proud bearing made it clear the color of his skin was no impediment. “A free black walks different than a slave,” he said. “White people recognize it immediately, even if they don’t know it. Walks different, talks different, carries himself different. It’s in the bones.” Constables never detained him and kidnappers kept their distance.