Cape Cod (66 page)

When others came out of their churches because they disagreed over slavery, they were called Come-Outers as well. In the eyes of the orthodox, the abolitionist Come-Outer and the religious lunatic merely pulled at different oars in the same boat.

“Whatever we call ourselves,” said Hannah, “we must move runaways to Canada quickly. The new law may prove toothless. But given our notoriety, Massachusetts may be crawling with federal marshals and southern agents already.”

“We’ll treat them the way we treated the British when you were a girl.”

“ ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ ” Hannah stared out her window, lost in memory. Then she noticed a man striding up the road. “My word, an answer to our prayers.”

Captain Jonathan Walker was about fifty, an altogether unremarkable specimen in frock coat and stovepipe hat. But like others who looked unremarkable on land, this man and his stovepipe stood out like boldness itself on the stern of a Boston ship.

In 1844, he had attempted to smuggle seven runaways aboard his ship. For his efforts, he spent eleven months in the jungle dampness of a Florida prison and had the letters “SS,” slave stealer, branded into his palm. A pariah in the South, he needed only raise his right hand to become a hero in the North. John Greenleaf Whittier even wrote “The Branded Hand,” making Walker one of the few Cape Codders ever to appear in a poem longer than five lines, without the word “Nantucket” in the rhyme scheme.

He sat on the straight-backed chair beside Hannah’s knitting frame and balanced his hat on his knees.

“To what do we owe the honor of your visit,” asked Hannah over the hat.

“Ladies, I’ve circled the world three times, and the trip from Harwich to the Barnstable Courthouse is the thirstiest journey I know.”

“Tea is all we can offer.” Hannah poured a cup.

“A fine drink.” He balanced the cup on top of the hat, as though it were a table that traveled with him wherever he went. “But after I do my business, I always take somethin’ stronger at Crocker’s Tavern, which this afternoon put me in the presence of Mr. Heman Bigelow.”

“My great-nephew,” said Hannah, “one of my brother Elkanah’s grandchildren.”

“A lawyer, is he?”

“A banker and businessman.”

“He
talked
like a lawyer, puffin’ and opinionatin’ that it was ’bout time all this slave runnin’ was put stop to. So one of the locals—didn’t catch his name—said he heard that Heman’s own
relatives
was runnin’ slaves.”

“Our fame spreads.”

“And may sink you, if Heman keeps talkin’. He said if he thought there was slaves in his aunt Hannah’s house, he’d send the sheriff to arrest ’em and think nothin’ about it.”

At that, there was a thump loud enough to startle Captain Walker’s stovepipe right off his knee. Then something rolled across the attic floor above them.

The captain looked up at the ceiling. “It sounds like somebody’s been pressing his ear to a glass on the floor, listenin’ to everythin’ we say.”

“Not a glass,” said Hannah. “A jelly jar.”

She led them into a closet and, with a broom handle, rapped twice on the ceiling, which then rose. But there was neither sound nor movement in the little space above.

“Jacob,” said Hannah gently, “come down, Jacob… You and Dorothea both.”

After a moment a ladder was lowered, and the pink soles of a black man’s feet appeared in a shaft of light. The black man did not descend tentatively. Once he had decided to come, he dropped like a big cat, fixed Nancy and Captain Walker with a furious glare, and puffed his chest in threat.

Then the reason for his ferocity appeared. A young woman hung down her feet, a young woman with child, nearing her time. In fact, she was too far along to back down the ladder properly, so she descended as if on a narrow staircase, an African princess in a blue gingham dress, her hand placed for support upon the shoulder of her devoted retainer.

She had coffee-colored skin and hazel eyes that showed a mother’s fear, not for herself but for her unborn child. It was a fear that every woman who had carried a child understood, just as Jacob’s protectiveness was known to every father.

They had lived on a Virginia plantation owned by a gambling drunkard. Jacob, the plantation carpenter, and Dorothea, a seamstress, had paid no mind to their master’s ways until he began to sell off what he called prime breeders to pay his gambling debts. One night, as they lay together, feeling the baby kick in her belly and fearing a sale that might tear them apart, they resolved to go to a place where they would be treated like human beings rather than breeders.

Making the trek to Norfolk, hiding in the cellar of a sympathetic Quaker, being smuggled onto the Yankee ship at midnight—their safe passage through these they had seen as evidence of God’s guiding hand. When the Yankee schooner leaned into the wind, they thought their ordeal had ended. But somewhere between Chesapeake Bay and Cape Cod, old white men had made a new law, and the northward journey stretched now even farther, like a trip the wrong way down a captain’s glass.

“We ain’t a-goin’ back, Miz Hannah,” said Jacob. “If this feller comin’ to—”

Walker held up his hand, causing Jacob to fall silent. The Negro could not read, but he had seen the symbol branded into other white men, and he knew its meaning.

“We’d best get them on their way to Canada right now,” said Hannah, “what with the tavern talk.”

“Canada’s a fair distance,” said Walker. “Why not Boston instead? There’s men on the Boston Vigilance Committee who can handle a schooner.”

“We cannot be certain what’s happening in Boston or how intent the federal forces have become.”

“I wouldn’t move them to Thatcher’s house or Howe’s,” offered Nancy. “Those houses are watched, and there’s some Cape Codders who’d gladly turn in a runaway for five dollars.”

Hannah went to the window, looked out on the plot where once the liberty pole had stood. “Indeed.”

“I know fishermen who’ll make the run to Nova Scotia”—Walker rubbed his palm and studied the Negroes—“but it might take a day to track ’em down.”

“I fear we may not have days,” said Hannah calmly, “in that Heman Bigelow is coming up the walk this very moment, with Sheriff Whittaker in tow.”

Jacob grabbed his wife. “We ain’t a-goin’ back.”

“Just go back to the attic,” answered Hannah.

ii.

At the front door, Heman Bigelow doffed his beaver hat. He always said that prosperous men wore prosperous hats, and at the bottom of this dispute was the matter of prosperity. Like most who supported the Compromise, he believed that anything was better for the country, and for trade, than civil war. And no part of the country slept more soundly upon the bed of trade than Cape Cod.

“What a surprise,” said Hannah upon his arrival, with little enough emotion that he could not tell what
kind
of surprise. Then she led Heman and the sheriff into the downstairs sitting room, where Nancy awaited. Captain Walker, however, had wisely hidden himself in the pantry.

Heman was thirty-two, in height and hard edges most surely a Bigelow. But somewhere along the line, his maternal ancestry—Snows and Linnels of old Cape stock—had bestowed upon him a pair of bespectacled eyes and a bald pate that seemed to shine with irony itself, in that he resembled no one so much as Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

While his brothers went to sea or to Boston, Heman had chosen to remain on Cape Cod and plow the fields of local investment. Fisheries, saltworks, cranberry farms, tanneries, the Sandwich glassworks, boatyards, and above all, the merchant marine had brought prosperity to Barnstable County. The first cracks in the prosperous facade had begun to show when saltworks met competition from the western mines. But prosperous men in prosperous hats would find ways to keep prosperity flowing, provided there was no war.

Nancy considered Heman an ass who wore his status as pompously as his hat. But through the whole of his visit, she felt as if
she
were about to have the baby, rather than the poor colored woman trembling in the attic.

“Sheriff Whittaker and I been talkin’ about the Underground Railroad. He’s heard that some members of our family are engaged in it, and”—Heman smiled as though he were about to grant a loan—“I just want to assure him of the otherwise.”

“Then assure him.” Hannah smiled sweetly.

Nancy looked straight at the sheriff. “I pity you, Emulous Whittaker. This Fugitive Slave Law may make you busier than a one-armed mackerel jigger.”

“A jigger for niggers.” Emulous Whittaker laughed, a disagreeable sound from a scrawny little body.

“You are also a plain-speakin’ man,” said Hannah dryly.

“On the lookout, upholdin’ the Constitution.”

“
‘
We
hold these truths to be self-evident…’ ” said Hannah.

Heman laughed, “Very good… a quote from the Preamble, is it not?”

“A pleasure to meet learned folks,” said the sheriff.

“Remember, ladies, tell your abolitionist friends that running an underground railroad is now a crime, even in the state of Massachusetts.” Heman put on his hat.

After they left, Hannah went to her desk, took out pen and paper, and scrawled a note. “We’re going to smuggle these people out right under Heman’s prosperous nose.”

“On a Bigelow boat?” Captain Walker now appeared from the pantry.

“No. Young Heman, by virtue of inheritance, owns half of Jack’s Island. There are Hilyards on the other half.”

“Hilyards?” Nancy laughed. “My husband never had a good thing to say about a Hilyard in his life, especially that drunkard Isaac.”

“If you want to run the railroad, you’re about to meet Hilyards in the flesh.” Hannah sealed the envelope and shoved it into her granddaughter’s hand. “Get goin’.”

“When?”

“Now, dear, now.”

Nancy had not expected this moment to arrive so quickly. She had hoped that she would have time to consider her tactics, choose her cohorts, select a wardrobe.

“Hannah, are you sayin’ that crazy old Come-Outer Will Hilyard’s a
conductor?
” asked Walker, still rooted to his spot in the middle of the rug. “Or any of his durn-fool spawn?”

“No, but Sam Hilyard has a fine sloop.”

“Sam? He’s even crazier than his brother… and older.”

“He is exactly my age.” Hannah raised her chin haughtily, then turned her gaze to Nancy. “Will can take you to Sam. Give Sam the letter, and he’ll run you north.”

iii.

Just after dark, Captain Walker’s carriage left Hannah’s barn and pointed east on the County Road. As it happened, Emulous Whittaker and Heman Bigelow were just then coming out of Crocker’s, and Whittaker gave a wave. Walker’s driver, a retired seaman named Quintal, nodded politely, and the man seated in the carriage gave a wave of his own.

“They recognized your carriage.” Nancy hunkered down in the shadows beside Captain Walker.

“Nonsense,” he whispered. “There are dozens of carriages on Cape Cod. And this is not the only one that’s closed up and battened down against the weather.”

“Then your hand… they saw your hand in the window.”

“Don’t act the nervous nellie. It won’t help if we
are
stopped.”

As the carriage took the turns before the courthouse, she watched Emulous and Heman walking into the road. Were they merely crossing, or stopping to inspect the depth of the wheel tracks? Then the carriage rolled down the hill and out of their view, and Captain Walker was jostled against Nancy.

He laughed now, as though he was enjoying himself. “This slave runnin’ makes folks awful close awful fast, don’t it, Miz Rains?”

“If I didn’t know you were an honorable man, Captain, I’d warn you that I carry a long hatpin.”

“You’ve nothin’ to fear from me. But Jacob must be gettin’ a nice view, along about now.”

Their legs were immodestly raised and their feet pressed against the front of the carriage. A blanket was draped over the legs, and the two frightened Negroes hid beneath.

“I can’t see nothin’,” came the muffled voice from beneath.

“Good,” said Nancy.

The carriage ground through the village and started up the hill at the east end. If Emulous and Heman decided to follow, this was where they would catch up, and if they saw the way the horses labored to pull such a small load, suspicion would rise. Then Nancy and the captain would have to lie about their purpose for being alone together on a Tuesday night. If they did it well, they would endure gossip, if they did it poorly, arrest.

Up they went, slow and slower, the steady snap of the driver’s whip popping in the night air, up past the Custom House, slower and slower, until at last Nancy could look out at the lighthouse on Sandy Neck.

“Hallelujah,” she whispered.

Then they heard horses coming up the hill. The captain raised his hand in a calming gesture. The hoofbeats came closer… faster… and went past with a rumble and a greeting to the driver.

“See now,” whispered Walker, “most storms blow themselves out before they ever do a bit of damage.”

And Nancy felt a bit better. It could not be said, however, that she felt brave or at all confident. She would have given anything that night to have been in her own house, reading her Jane Austen.

But on they went, through the desolate stretches of Yarmouth and Dennis. To the south, on the treeless hills of the mid-Cape, the sails of the windmills turned in the moonlight, grinding the autumn grain, and their creaking echoed eerily across the land. To the north, beyond the meadows and marshes, the lighthouse beams pierced the blackness of the bay.

From time to time, however, the desolation gave way to groves of new-planted pitch pine. Nancy had read that the Pilgrims found Cape Cod covered with trees and their descendants had stripped it bare in a few generations. She could not believe this, could not imagine it, for in the moonlight, the stunted trees looked like lost children wandering the sand, as homeless as the Negroes hidden beneath her legs.

Along toward midnight, the carriage rocked into Brewster, where, it was said, there were more shipmasters than anywhere else in America. And most had built fine homes for land-bound quarterdecks.