Elm Creek Quilts [07] The Sugar Camp Quilt (19 page)

Uncle Jacob hefted a barrel of fresh sap and poured some into the first kettle. “Some folks can work the land all their lives and never learn a thing from it. You have to tend the sugarbush as you would any crop. Not like Amos Liggett.” He nearly spat the name. “The fool man chops into the tree with an ax to get to the sap instead of drilling a hole. All that does is injure the tree and allow pestilence and infection to ruin the sap in years to come. I’ve seen trees on his land that had six buckets around them collecting the sap that dripped from those hatchet cuts. Six holes on one tree! It’s no wonder his sugar tastes like burnt sand.”

He had gone on to instruct her in the proper carving of a spile from a branch of sumac, but Dorothea had not paid as much attention as she would have had she known he would not see another sugaring season. At the time she had wondered, idly, how her uncle had come to discover how Mr. Liggett’s sugar tasted, since they never traded work and were definitely not friends. Now, a new realization struck her: Uncle Jacob must have observed Mr. Liggett’s trees firsthand in order to know such specific details of his sugaring methods. Evidently the night of his death was not Uncle Jacob’s only occasion to visit Elm Creek Farm.

Troubled, Dorothea swung open the door to the sugarhouse and stepped inside. Uncle Jacob’s tools lay in their proper places, exactly where he had left them. Dorothea tried to imagine sugaring without him, but her mind’s eye refused to form the pictures.

One object out of place caught her eye: The quilt she had painstakingly created from her uncle’s drawings lay on the ground beside an old wooden bench. She remembered last seeing it draped across the bench, but she must have jostled it in her haste to search for her uncle. She bent down to pick up the quilt, brushing dirt and stray bits of crumbled maple leaves from the fabric. Her gaze traced the path the triangles made, lingering upon familiar scraps she recognized from sewing her uncle’s work shirts and Sunday trousers. Without realizing it, she had made him a memorial quilt.

She folded the quilt and tucked it under her arm.

“We must send for Jonathan,” said Lorena as the family walked back to the house from the gravesite. Dorothea felt a stirring of feeling then, a distant gratitude. Jonathan would surely come to hear the will read. If, as they all hoped, he inherited Uncle Jacob’s estate, he might even decide to stay and continue his studies with the local physician.

Once Uncle Jacob was safely beneath the ground, Lorena began sorting through his papers. She found his ledger and the will, which she wanted to open but declined to do so without his lawyer present, lest anyone accuse her of tampering with it. Dorothea knew a simple comparison with the copy on file with the county clerk would clear her of any such charges. She suspected her mother hesitated to read the will out of fear that it would not fulfill her hopes.

A steady flow of condolences came once the death notice appeared in the
Creek’s Crossing Informer
. Friends visited with gifts of food and words of comfort. All who came agreed that he had been a hard man, but decent and God-fearing, and that surely he would receive his just reward. “The Lord is merciful and I am confident he will reward my brother as he deserves,” Lorena always replied.

Dorothea wanted to remind her that it was not always a mercy to receive what one deserved.

A
WEEK AFTER
U
NCLE
Jacob’s death, Abel Wright came to pay his respects. Dorothea took him to the grave and stood some distance away while he bowed his head in silent prayer. Then he looked up and said, “I have something to tell you and your folks.”

Dorothea took him back to the house, where her mother had been emptying Uncle Jacob’s bedroom of his clothes and books and his few other possessions. She could not dispose of anything until after the will was read in case the worst happened and Jonathan did not inherit, but she wanted to have the room ready for her son should he decide to take it, or for herself and Robert if Jonathan declined.

Lorena put the kettle on and sent Dorothea to the barn for her father while Mr. Wright took a seat in the front room. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair while Dorothea poured, but gave her a kindly smile and thanked her as he took his cup. His expression grew more serious as he returned his attention to her parents.

“There’s something about your brother you need to know,” he said. “I can tell you why he was on Liggett’s land that night.”

Startled, Dorothea set the teapot on the table too hard, rattling the china. She murmured an apology, sank into her usual seat by the fire, and picked up the pieces of an Album block with trembling hands. She held her breath and waited for Mr. Wright to confirm Charley’s suspicions: Mr. Liggett had been involved in her uncle’s death.

Robert began, “How—”

“I remember now,” Lorena interrupted. “You saw him that day. He said you had told him of Mr. Schultz’s return.”

“I saw him later, too.” Mr. Wright hesitated. “He was coming from my place. He was going to cross Elm Creek at the place where it narrows in Liggett’s woods.”

“Why?” asked Robert. “Why not use the ferry?”

“He couldn’t be seen crossing so many times in one night. Folks might ask questions.”

“Questions? What questions?” asked Dorothea. “Why could he not be seen?”

“He didn’t want any of you folks to know.” He directed his gaze at Dorothea. “Except you. He was proud of you. He thought maybe you could be told. The older he got, the more he wished he could ask for your help. But he knew it was too dangerous.”

Robert’s voice was slow and direct. “What was too dangerous?”

“Helping runaways.”

The room was silent.

“My brother—” Lorena paused and began again. “My brother was no abolitionist.”

“He didn’t talk about it, but he was,” said Mr. Wright. “Do you really think I saved up enough money to free Constance selling cheese?”

“But he objected to your trip,” said Lorena. “If it had been up to him, Constance would have perished enslaved.”

“No,” said Dorothea, suddenly remembering. “He objected to the timing.”

“He objected to putting a single penny into the pockets of slavers, too,” said Mr. Wright. “He wanted me to help Constance escape, like we helped the others. That’s what I wanted at first, but when Constance wouldn’t run, I agreed to do it her way. When we couldn’t wait any longer, Jacob gave me the rest of the money I needed.”

“You brought escaping slaves north in your wagon after delivering your cheeses in the South,” said Robert.

“Sometimes. Other times I just brought them things they needed. Directions, false papers, money, things like that.”

“Why did Jacob not tell us?” asked Lorena, bewildered. “He knew we loathe slavery. We would have assisted him.”

Mr. Wright almost allowed a smile. “Sure, he knew how you felt. So does everyone else in town. Jacob thought you two were too free with your opinions. You might not have been able to keep quiet.”

Insulted, Lorena said, “That is just like my brother. Selfish even in his altruism, not to allow us to share in his mission.”

“Well, you can surely share in it now. We need this station. We already lost one on this route when the Carters left—”

“The Carters?” echoed Robert.

“Goodness,” gasped Lorena. “Are there any more abolitionists in this town who have not dared to reveal themselves to us?”

“Some serve the cause of abolition by speaking out, and others by operating in secrecy,” Dorothea broke in. “Clearly Uncle Jacob was able to assist runaways because no one, not even his family, would have suspected him.”

“Be that as it may.” Lorena lifted her palms and let them fall to her lap. “I only wish we could have helped him.”

Mr. Wright said, “Dorothea already has.”

He exacted their solemn vow that they would never reveal the rest of the tale before he agreed to explain.

The escape route through the Elm Creek Valley was relatively new, as the southern pass through the Appalachians was difficult to navigate except by those who knew it well. Most stationmasters knew little about the other stations along the route, a necessary precaution should any one of them be compelled to confess what he knew. The safe havens for runaways ranged from the house proper, in the case of the Wrights, to a secret cellar beneath a stable, to Uncle Jacob’s sugar camp. “He wasn’t so protective of his sugar-making secrets,” said Mr. Wright. “He just pretended to keep folks away. He thought it was right funny anyone believed it.”

Mr. Wright knew of at least one station between his farm and the southern pass; there could be more, but he wasn’t speculating. It was safer not to know too much about any station but one’s own and the next one down the line. Runaways who reached the Wright farm used to travel on foot to Two Bears Farm two miles to the north, making a risky journey across Mr. Liggett’s property in order to ford Elm Creek at its narrowest point.

Two Bears Farm was lost to them after the Carters moved away, since no one knew Mr. Nelson well enough to ask him to continue the dangerous work. Until then, Uncle Jacob had occasionally allowed runaways to spend the night in his barn out of respect for his late wife’s beliefs, but with the Carters gone, he had agreed to assume a more significant role and became a stationmaster. Unwilling to risk his family’s safety and reluctant for them to discover his clandestine activities, he made his sugar camp the station. Unfortunately, the distance between the Wright farm and Uncle Jacob’s was too great to navigate on foot in a single night. For the past eight months, fugitives had been forced to find shelter in corn fields or woods between the Wright farm and Uncle Jacob’s sugar camp, unless Mr. Wright could carry them north in his wagon or Uncle Jacob could travel south to fetch them. This was not always possible, as frequent travel between the two farms would draw unwanted attention. To conceal the truth from the Grangers, Uncle Jacob would pretend to have an appointment with his attorney.

“But he made frequent visits to his attorney long before the Carters moved away,” interrupted Lorena. “And on occasion I saw him bring back legal papers. Did he forge those, as well, merely to deceive us?”

“No, many of those visits were genuine,” said Mr. Wright. He gave a rueful shrug, either to apologize for Uncle Jacob’s behavior or for what he intended to say next. “He said you folks were always on your best behavior after he met with his lawyer. That’s why he considered it such an advantageous excuse.”

“Well,” huffed Lorena. “I hardly know what to think.”

But Dorothea knew. So much of her uncle’s strange behavior now made perfect sense—his self-enforced isolation in the sugar camp, the occasions when he could not be found when needed, the meals he carried with him as he went off to work early, his frequent visits to the attorney. He had not been changing his will at the slightest offense after all, as he had encouraged them to believe. In hindsight Dorothea was certain he had enjoyed deceiving them.

“You said I helped him,” said Dorothea, “but I cannot imagine how.”

“Do you still have that quilt you made him?”

Dorothea nodded and retrieved the Sugar Camp Quilt from her attic bedroom. Mr. Wright unfolded it and ran his hand across its surface. “Your uncle never knew when runaways would come, and since he couldn’t wait around the sugar camp to greet them, he had Dorothea make this quilt. It marked the sugar camp as a safe haven, of course, but it also told runaways where to go next, in case they had to leave before Jacob had a chance to explain.”

Robert shook his head. “The
quilt
told them?”

Even as he spoke, Dorothea understood. “Those odd blocks my uncle drew—the varied number of triangle points on the Delectable Mountains blocks. This is a map.”

“In a way it is.” Mr. Wright held out the quilt to Dorothea. “It’s more like a list of directions.”

“Where do they lead?” asked Lorena, gazing eagerly at the quilt as Dorothea draped it over her lap.

Even as Mr. Wright confessed that he did not know, Dorothea began to puzzle it out. “These represent the Four Brothers mountains to the north of the Elm Creek Valley,” she said, indicating the upper left portion of the quilt where the three- and five-triangle edged blocks stood apart from those that had the traditional four. She wondered how she had not noticed before how the number of triangles in the blocks mirrored the most prominent peaks of the mountain range. “And these …” She examined the five blocks Uncle Jacob had so deliberately sketched. “These must be intermediate steps along the safest route north.”