Stealing Freedom (20 page)

The man apologized to the doctor and rowed furiously. As soon as they disembarked on the opposite shore, Dr. H. ordered Ann into the driver's seat and joined her. He handed Ann his hat and slapped the reins hard until his horse was galloping over the rutted road, Ann was bouncing wildly, and the doctor's hair was flying in the wind.

When they'd left the ferry far behind, Dr. H. slowed his horse to a walk, then pulled him to a stop. “Would you like a more comfortable seat inside the carriage?” he asked. There were beads of sweat on his forehead, and his hair had flopped into his face.

“Please,” Ann said. She'd gripped the seat so tightly her fingers were numb. She gave the doctor his hat. “Thank you,” she said.
Thank you for keeping me safe
, she thought.

Dr. H. smiled at her, raked his hair back out of his face, and put his hat on. He jerked his chin toward the horse. “He likes to go fast,” he said.

Ann climbed into the carriage and bundled her hands and legs under the blanket. For a long time she watched the landscape go by—clear-cut farmland, forest, small creeks. She swung around to look behind several times to make sure no one had followed them. No one had.

After a while the motion and warmth made her sleepy. She dozed, half wondering what Philadelphia would be like, half dreaming that she was back in Rockville, walking hand in hand with Alfred on a bright summer day.

Suddenly she became aware that the carriage had stopped. She rose up out of her dream state like a swimmer rising to the surface of a lake. They were in a heavily wooded area, cut through by the road. Between the naked branches she could see the sky, white and drab with heavy winter clouds. She sat motionless. Had the ferryman followed them, after all? Was there a sheriff barring their way? She dared not move.

Dr. H. hopped down from the driver's seat and opened the carriage door.

“Is something wrong?” Ann asked quickly.

He looked at her with a calm smile. “No. I just thought you might like to stretch your legs. We passed the Mason-Dixon Line a while back. You are on free soil.”

“Oh!” Ann jumped out of the carriage and dropped to her knees on the frozen mud of the road. She broke off a clump of red earth and crumbled it in her hand. “Pennsylvania… no one holds slaves here?” she asked.

“Not since about 1847,” said the doctor, “so it has been eight years or so.”

Ann rose and walked a little way into the woods. Free soil, free trees, free sky, free blanket of dry leaves under her feet. What moments before had looked like a colorless winter landscape now was a beautiful tapestry of muted hues—gray bark, brown leaves, white sky, and ruddy soil.

“Six years ago,” said the doctor, “all you would have needed to do was set foot in a free state, and chances were you could have lived free with no one to trouble you. But that Fugitive Slave Law changed everything. Now every sheriff is bound by law to help return runaways.”

“That's why I'm going to Canada,” said Ann softly.

The doctor nodded.

“So this soil is not really free for
me.”
She brushed off her hands and rubbed the streaks of red dirt from the knees of her britches.

“You have several hundred miles to go before you reach truly free soil,” said Dr. H.

Ann smelled Philadelphia before she could see it. It began with the odor of things burning. Soon they were close enough to see the redbrick factories and the smokestacks billowing black smoke. They drove onto the muddy, rutted streets between row houses crowded together like jars in a cupboard. Here the odor was also of things rotting. In the alleys behind the houses were piles of garbage and poor shacks made of wood scraps. She saw a group of pasty-faced boys in torn jackets huddled around
a fire. A particularly large pile of garbage had both a little red-haired girl and a hog rooting through it. As Ann's carriage passed, several fat rats came scuttling out of the pile and across the road, startling the horse.

The sides of some buildings had signs painted on them: “Superior White Ash” and “C. Souder, Bootmaker.” And everywhere there was traffic: horse-drawn carts filled with barrels, men on horseback, raggedly clothed children playing on doorsteps, women hurrying along the muddy sidewalks with packages from the day's marketing balanced in their arms.

Dr. H. sat with her and directed her driving. They turned onto Locust Street and then onto Twelfth Street. Here there were fewer houses, all of them well kept, less traffic, and more lawns. In front of a tidy two-story frame house, Dr. H. told her to stop. “This is Mr. William Still's home,” he said. “Reveal your true identity to him
only.
To everyone else you are Joe, from York.” Ann promised to do as he said.

A black woman with cheerful eyes and a kind smile opened the door to the home. “Why, Doctor, how good to see you,” she said.

“Mrs. Still, I wish to leave this lad with you a short while, and I will call in two days and see further about him,” said the doctor. With that, he left in a hurry.

“Come into the kitchen,” Mrs. Still said to Ann. “With only a few days left until Thanks Giving, we're all busy as can be with the baking.”

The kitchen was steamy and warm and smelled like nutmeg and pumpkin. Besides Mrs. Still, there were two other women up to their brown elbows in flour and sugar. One of the women
was young, about Hannah's age. The other was older and plump as a baked apple. Ann learned from introductions and from their conversation that the young woman was a hired girl working for the Stills, and the plump one was a fugitive, Laura Lewis, from Kentucky, who was staying with the Stills on her way north. The group was stirring and kneading, talking and laughing. Ann watched for a while and realized she wanted desperately to join in, to put her hands to work at old, familiar tasks, to feel part of this group of women, rather than lonely and separate.

“I would love to help,” she announced cheerfully. “I'll just wash my hands, and— “

The women's laughter stopped her short. “Oh, dear, no!” said Mrs. Still. “I could never abide a boy in the kitchen.”

Ann looked down at her britches, dismayed. “But I'm not actually…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the promise she'd made to Dr. H. She could reveal her true identity only to Mr. Still. The women's eyes danced with amusement. “I'm not actually very good at baking,” she said quietly.

“I should think not!” said Mrs. Still.

The three of them went back to their work, and Ann sat idle at the kitchen table. She wished for Mr. Still to arrive very soon. The light outside grew dim with the evening, and lamps were lit.

“He worries me so when he stays late at the shipyard,” said Mrs. Still. “I tell him his customers should call on him in the daylight hours so that he can get home safely.”

“Those gangs are getting rougher and meaner every day,” said the hired girl.

“Gangs?” Ann asked, not sure what they were talking about.

“Mmm-hmm,” said Laura. “It's mostly the Irish who just got here. They're poor as mud and angry as snakes.” She began listing off the names of the gangs, counting them on flour-dusted fingers. “They've got the Moyamensing Killers, the Blood Tubs, the Death Fetchers, and the Smashers.”

“Don't forget the Bleeders and the Tormenters,” the hired girl chimed in.

“When they're not fighting each other, they've been known to pull respectable black citizens from their beds and beat them to death,” said Mrs. Still. “And a black man walking alone after dark is not the least bit safe.” She peered out the window at the darkening sky and clucked her tongue.

“They paint nasty words everywhere, too,” said Laura. “All over fences and on the sides of buildings.”

There was a noise at the front door. Mrs. Still cried, “Mercy!” and went to greet her husband.

“The doctor has been here and left this young boy,” she said as she led Mr. Still into the kitchen. “He said he would call again in a couple of days to see about him.”

Mr. Still was chestnut-skinned, with broad cheeks and serious eyes. He was wearing the kind of tailored suit that only fine gentlemen wore. “Ah, you must be the person the doctor went to Washington after, are you not?” he asked Ann.

Ann glanced at the three women, who were all looking at her. She swallowed hard, and said, “No.”

“Where are you from, then?” asked Mr. Still.

“From York, sir,” she said. But as the words left her lips, she
heard her father's gentle voice in her head: “No good ever came out of a lie, baby girl.”

Mr. Still was saying, “From York? Why, then, did the doctor bring you here? He went expressly to Washington after a young girl, who was to be brought away dressed up as a boy, and I took you to be the person.”

Ann didn't know what to do. She didn't want to lie again, but she'd been forbidden to tell the truth. Without saying another word, she got up and walked out of the house.

Ann stood on the front porch, looking up into the cold, starry sky. She wondered if the gangs were out prowling tonight, and if they came up onto porches to grab people. She was thankful when the door opened and Mr. Still poked his head out. Ann stood on tiptoe to peer behind him. He was alone.

“I
am Ann
Maria,” she whispered. “The doctor told me not to tell anyone but you.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Still. “You
did
have me confused. Come—my wife and the others can be trusted.”

Back in the house, Mr. Still revealed Ann's true identity to the three women. They laughed at how thoroughly they'd been fooled. “And to think we let her sit there twiddling her thumbs when there was work to be done!” said Laura. They let Ann join in with the rest of the cooking.

After a fine dinner, Mrs. Still offered Ann a bath. Ann was surprised when, instead of pulling a washtub into the middle of the kitchen floor, Mrs. Still led her upstairs to a small room that already had a sink and a bathtub in it.

“But isn't it a lot of work to carry the water up here, bucket
by bucket?” asked Ann. “And then to empty it, we'll have to carry it all back down the steps and outside….”

Mrs. Still smiled at her. “You've not been to a large city before, then?”

Ann shook her head.

Mrs. Still leaned over the tub and fiddled with some brass knobs at one end of it. To Ann's utter amazement, water began to flow out of a brass spigot into the tub.

As Ann stared, wide-eyed, Mrs. Still explained. “Thanks to Kensington Water Works, we now have running water.”

But suddenly the brass spigot began to sputter and spit, and the water coming out of it turned brown, then black, then stopped coming out at all. Mrs. Still put her hands on her hips, annoyed, and called to her husband, “William, the water gave out again.”

“Use the well,” he called from the parlor.

She turned off the useless spigot. “You can either get a bath the old-fashioned way, or we can try again tomorrow.”

Ann chose to wait, both because she was fascinated by the thought of a modern bath in a “bathroom,” as she learned it was called, and because she was so weary she'd rather simply go to bed.

“You'll bunk in with Laura,” said Mrs. Still. She carried the candle down the hall to a bedroom with a four-poster bed, two wooden chairs, and a dressing table. “I presume you didn't bring a nightgown away with you, so you may borrow one of mine.”

Ann was glad to take off the britches and jacket, which by now smelled quite like the horse she'd been driving. She put on
the soft nightgown, gathered up a quilt she found folded at the foot of the bed, and chose a corner of the room in which to bed down for the night.

As she drifted off to sleep, someone padded into the room in stocking feet. She opened one eye and saw Laura hold a candle high, making the shadows of the chairs move and shift on the walls. Then she padded out.

“Where did Ann Maria go?” she heard Laura ask.

“She went to bed,” said Mrs. Still.

“She ain't there,” said Laura.

Both women returned to the room. “She's gone!” cried Mrs. Still. “William!”

Ann sat up sleepily in her corner. “I'm over here,” she said in as loud a voice as she could muster.

Laura marched over to her and shook her head. “Lord, Lord.”

Soon Mr. and Mrs. Still were also standing over her, looking upset.

“Did I do something wrong?” Ann asked. “Is this your quilt?” She lifted a corner of the quilt toward Laura.

“So this is what they teach children in the South?” Mrs. Still's voice rose in anger. “That they're fit to sleep on the floor like dogs?” She reached to grasp Ann's hands and pulled her up.

“Come on, girl,” said Laura. “You've got a lot to learn about living like a free person.”

Mr. Still left discreetly, and the two women walked Ann to the four-poster bed. Mrs. Still folded down the covers. “Up you go.”

Ann touched the bed, but didn't move. “But…it's got sheets on it…”

Laura sighed. “Lord, would you get in? I'm tired as an old plow horse.” Laura climbed in on one side of the bed. Her large form made a deep indentation in the mattress.

Mrs. Still bade them good night. Ann climbed hesitantly onto the soft bed and sat there, feeling the cool smoothness of the linen sheets against the soles of her feet.

“Lie down,” Laura ordered.

“But I've never—”

“Stop talking, lay that skinny body of yours down, and go to sleep,” said Laura.

Ann scooted under the covers and slowly laid herself down on the bed. The softness enveloped her shoulders like a hug.

“In Kentucky I used to sleep on the bare dirt, with ants and spiders and all,” said Laura sleepily. “Never again.”

Ann's tired muscles relaxed into the comfort. Laura's breathing grew deep and rhythmic next to her, and she felt herself sink down into sleep.

The next day was the oddest day Ann had ever spent. First, she was awake before the rest of Philadelphia used up all the clean water, so she got a modern bath in the “bathroom.” And when she was done, Mrs. Still showed her the hole in the bottom of the tub, through which the water drained away to some unknown place, so she didn't have to cart all that water down the steps after all. Ann was very impressed. She dressed in her britches and jacket and went down to breakfast.