Chaneysville Incident (64 page)

“He trotted up the path, the rock on either side falling away until it was no more than hip-high. The sound of the stream was so loud he could not gauge its nearness, could only peer through the gathering gloom, hoping to see the gorge before he stumbled into it. He slowed then, and crept ahead, wondering, hoping, then despairing, as the path twisted in a sharp dogleg and opened out onto a narrow ledge, and he looked down at the gorge, which was not ten feet wide here, but fourteen, perhaps fifteen, and out at the other side, which was two feet, perhaps three, higher than the side on which he stood.

“For a while he looked at it, remembering the day when he had looked at the gorge from the other side, probably underestimating the width of it, certainly thinking that if he ever tried to leap it he would be fresh, or at least not exhausted, and he would be jumping from the high ground to the low. Then, even if he had judged the distance right, the leap would have seemed possible. Now it did not; now it
was
not. And so he waited, listening, hoping that he would not have to try, hoping that his pursuers had lost the trail, had missed the opening in the rock. He stood there, panting, hoping. And then he heard the sound of men’s voices, hard, excited voices, heard them even above the dull booming of the stream; they were close.

“Then he stopped hoping, stopped despairing. He stepped to the very edge of the gorge and stood for a moment, his toes hanging over nothing, and then leaped, his legs straightening and his arms slamming back to give him thrust, his body leaning out flat. For a moment he was rising, almost soaring, but then gravity took him. Halfway across, he knew that he would not make it; his feet were sinking down into the gorge, then his knees. But then his chest struck hard against the rocky edge. The breath was driven from him, but he threw his arms up, hooking them over the edge, let them take the shock as his feet slammed into the rock below. For a moment he hung there, gasping for air, but feeling the relief that came from being alive at all. And then he began to slide.

“It seemed slow to him, terribly slow. He had plenty of time to send his hands groping for something to hold on to, to find something, a knob of rock, to grasp it and hope, and then feel it crumble beneath his fingers, and then to feel the snow falling away as his arms slipped over the edge, to feel the skin of his wrists scraping away on the rock, to actually feel each hand, each finger, losing contact with the rock. It seemed that way, but it was probably not that way; probably all he felt was the loss of support and then the free fall, and then the awful pain in his chest as his body slammed into a rock outcropping seven feet below. He felt the pain, but he managed to curl around the outcropping and hold on.

“This time he did lose consciousness, long enough for the men who pursued him to come and stand above him, looking across the chasm. When he came to he heard them there, heard them speculating as to what kind of desperation would make a man try a leap like that, what kind of desperation would make it possible for him to succeed, and realized that they had not looked down, or if they had, they had failed to see him. He kept his eyes closed, listening, hoping. And then he heard a new voice, a voice that had command in it: Pettis.

“The voice came clearly, questioning, and the voice of someone else, the accent and inflection telling him it was a man from the South County, answering: Pettis wanting to know if they were certain they had seen tracks on the far side, the man responding that it was too dark to say for sure, but it had looked like tracks; Pettis wanting to know if they were sure he hadn’t fallen, the man saying they had been close enough to see him leap, and surely would have heard him scream if he had fallen; Pettis asking how long to go around, the man answering half an hour, maybe longer, in the dark.

“C.K. waited, but they said no more. He opened his eyes then, expecting to see nothing but mist above him. Instead he saw Pettis, still leaning out over the chasm. For a moment it seemed that Pettis had to see him, that he had seen him, was looking straight at him. But the shadows were too dense, or the light was wrong; Pettis turned away.

“C.K. gave them time to get clear, counting the seconds to make sure he would not wait too long, as a way of keeping his mind off the pain in his chest. When he had counted off three thousand seconds he eased his hold on the rock outcrop, felt around on the face of the rock. He found handholds with no trouble, even though his fingers were numbed by cold and shock, climbed up without difficulty. It was so easy he wanted to laugh. And when he had pulled himself over the edge and lay looking over at the other side, seeing how easy it would have been to leap the other way, he did laugh.

He lost track of time then; he could have lain there laughing for five minutes, or ten. But then his mind started working again, and he realized what he should have realized as soon as he had heard Pettis talking: Pettis had said ‘he.’ Not ‘they’; ‘he.’ And he realized what that had to mean; that Pettis did not care about runaway slaves; just about one particular runaway slave. That what was going on was not a hunt for fugitives, but a hunt for C.K. Washington, with a bunch of fugitive slaves used as bait, their fates unimportant compared to the importance of capturing C.K. Washington. Pettis had set a trap within a trap. C.K. knew then that it was over for him. All of it. There would be no final season of selling moonshine, no leisurely retreat to Philadelphia. He would not dare stay in the County. He would not dare go to Philadelphia, either. For if Pettis had tracked him down this far, he had probably tracked him from Philadelphia. Perhaps Pettis had heard about a colored man who made whiskey and brought it across the mountains. Or perhaps he had heard one of the Philadelphia
bourgeois
complaining about a former member in good standing of the black middle class who had deserted the fold, and embraced not only moonshining but whoremongering. Or perhaps not. Perhaps Pettis had found him by accident. It didn’t matter; because he could not afford to take the chance. He would have to head north to the cold of Canada; his choices were gone.

“He heard a single gunshot. They had killed the horse. Now they would be starting to make the circuit around the gorge, on their way to pick up his trail. He had half an hour’s lead, perhaps a little more, certainly not much more. It was time to rise and run again.

“But his body was tired, and hurt; it was not going to be enough of a lead, no matter how soon he rose. The next valley was hardly a valley at all, just a hollow with no outlet to the north. If he made it beyond that he would be in Cumberland Valley; to turn north then would be to give up. But he knew he would have no choice but to turn north there. Because he could not climb another mountain.

“And so, because it made no real difference, he spent an extra minute resting his tired body, thinking. And then it came to him. He could double his lead, double it and perhaps lose Pettis altogether. All he had to do was stand up and turn around and leap that gorge again.

“He lay there thinking about it, thinking about how Pettis would come around in half an hour and find no tracks but think that it was only because the snowfall had covered them, and would send his men coursing down the mountainside, in a desperate attempt to catch a shadow; how he would curse; how he finally take a cadre back to round up the runaways, to try and salvage that much, and how they would find nothing. Because with an hour’s lead and a storm to cover his trail, C.K. could get to Iiames’ Mill and take the slaves and lead them up over Tussey Mountain and into town and hide them. Then they would be as safe as they could be. And C.K. Washington would be finished, but he would end with a success. It was nice to think about, and to try it made more sense than to run down into Cumberland Valley and find himself on the flat at daylight, hampered by the storm, or bogged down when the west wind piled the drifts.

“And so he stood up and leaped, giving it no more thought than that, and making the distance with ease, stumbling when he landed, falling hard against the wall of rock, throwing himself sideways to keep from slipping back, feeling the pain as his ribs struck the rock, knowing that the fall must have cracked one or more, but knowing, too, that he had made it. He let himself lie there for only a moment. Then he rose and started back the way he had come, walking now, through the darkening mist, the scuffing of his footfalls echoing softly from the rock on either side.

“It was full dark when he reached the end of the path—so dark that he would not have known he had reached that point had it not been for the sudden dying of the echoes that had bounced back from the rock. He stopped then, standing in the darkness, feeling the mist wet and cold on his face, and listened. Because he had made the mistake of underestimating Pettis, not once, but twice, and he had been lucky enough to survive it, but he could not count on being lucky again. He would have to assume that Pettis was as good as he was, as sensible as he was. And the sensible thing to do would be to split the party into three groups, sending two to round the gorge at either end, leaving one, a small group of four or five men, to guard the backtrail; to leave them there, at the entrance to the path.

“And so he listened. Once he thought he heard the sound of harness jingling, and his hand went to his pistol, but when he focused on the sound he heard only the light tinkle of the snow falling through the trees a hundred yards down the slope. He waited, counting the seconds, knowing that time was slipping away, that soon he would have to take the chance. He waited. Five minutes. Ten. Then he moved, not because he was satisfied, but because there was always the chance that Pettis would be alerted by the lack of trail on the far side of the gorge, would turn and come back and find his trail and hunt him down by torchlight; he had to move now, to give the snow time to cover trail.

“He started down the mountain, still uncertain that he was alone, but hoping that if he was not, he would escape detection. There was a chance he would; it was so dark he could not see his own feet, could only feel the snow spilling down into his boots, the chill that came to his toes. He forced himself to move more quickly, in order to keep himself warm, even though the faster movement made his ribs ache. He ignored the pain, allowed himself to think ahead. A mile down in the valley he had a cache. Not a large one. Just emergency supplies: some dried meat, a jug of whiskey, a blanket, some clean cloth. He could pass by there, wrap his side with bandages, ease the pain in his belly with jerky, the pain in his side with whiskey. Then he would find the fugitives after that; they would all be safe.”

My cup was empty again. I did not recall drinking the last of the toddy, but I must have, because when I raised the cup to my lips there was nothing there. Somehow she knew it, even though I made no sign; she took the cup and rose and went to the stove. So I watched as she made the toddy, not able to see her, seeing only her silhouette. She mixed as I would, using the thumb for the sugar, pouring the whiskey easily. She brought the cup to me and pressed it into my hands, letting her hands linger there for a moment, holding the warmth of the cup against mine. I knew then that I had underestimated her, and had done it in a way that cheated us both. She let go of my hands and took her seat again, and I could see her face in the candlelight.

“He could not take his eyes off her,” I said. “He could not really see her—the interior of the mill was too dark, the crack through which he peered too narrow—but he watched her form, silhouetted against the glowing hearth, as she dipped a cup into a small kettle and then handed it to another woman, a small woman, who sat huddled a few feet away, a dark form clutched close to her breast. C.K. did not watch her; his eyes were on the first woman, and he watched her carefully, as she went again to the fire and knelt and stirred it. The coals glowed more brightly, and flame flared, and for a moment he could almost see her face—almost, but not quite. It didn’t matter; he didn’t need to see her face, didn’t really want to see her face. For the moment he wanted only to stand with the cold wind knifing at his back, the snow in which he stood slowly numbing his feet and ankles and calves, and watch the outline of her; that was all that he could stand.

“He had found his cache with little difficulty, and the mill with even less. He approached it warily, looking for any sign that Pettis had somehow learned about it and set a trap there, determined not to underestimate the man again. But there was no sign of a trap. There was no sign of anything; the mill was simply a mill, not large, perhaps thirty-five feet by forty, two stories high, made of fieldstone and wood, dark and silent, the weir shut, the wheel still, the windows shuttered. The fire inside burned—there was the smell of burning coal hanging in the air—but only a wisp of smoke escaped the chimney; the fire had been banked for the night.

“Or, perhaps, for the duration of the storm. For the storm was growing. The snow fell less rapidly now, but the flakes were no longer soft and gentle; they were hard, icy spicules that came slicing out of the darkness, cutting at his face. Soon the snow could stop, but the temperature would fall—faster, still, than it was already falling—and the wind would whip the snow on the ground into an angry froth, taking it back up into the sky and driving it across the land in great voracious clouds. That could last for hours or days—certainly it would last into the next day. And so the mill was shut down and the fire was banked; for no man, no miller, anyway, would venture out into that cold, that wind, that sea of snow. All any man with sense would want would be to be at home, with a fire on the hearth and wood stacked in the corner, with food in his belly and a toddy in his hand.

“That was what C.K. wanted, what he was thinking about when he finally approached the mill, forcing himself to wade in the icy water of the pond so as not to leave tracks, and coming to stand near one of the shuttered windows, in order to peer inside. But then he had seen the woman, bending at the hearth, and the thoughts had left him; he had forgotten the wind and the cold, had forgotten everything, except how to stand and watch her moving.