Honor hesitated. She should get back to Adam’s store where she was meeting Jack. And she still had to give Belle’s letter to the stage that went to Wellington daily. But the baby’s needy wail cut through such thoughts, and it was impossible to say no to Mrs. Reed—so impossible that Honor knew if asked she would have to continue to help runaways. But Mrs. Reed was not asking that.
There was only a ribbon of light from the window to see by as Honor crept in, and before going to the baby she pulled open the curtains. As sunlight flooded the room, the baby turned her head from the pile of bedclothes she was lying on, caged in by a variety of wooden chairs. She caught sight of Honor, widened her glistening eyes, and added a high-pitched scream to her crying. She was a plump baby, with tight black ringlets, fat cheeks and a bow-shaped mouth. As Honor approached her she rolled over in terror and began flailing arms and legs like a turtle caught on a rock. Five or six months old, Honor thought. Old enough to roll over but not to sit up or crawl. She thought back; that meant Mrs. Reed’s daughter was pregnant when she had her wedding dress made. Honor hoped there had been enough material.
She moved a chair aside, crouched next to the baby and laid a hand on her back. “There now, my dear. How is it with thee?” She tried to imagine the bump lodged in her womb turning into this squirming, squalling being. It didn’t seem possible.
Then she noticed the quilt.
Honor was now familiar with most American quilt styles. She might not like the colors or pattern, but they were designed with care, the cloth chosen from the best fabrics available, even if made from scraps of old clothes. The patterns were deliberate and, whether simple or complex, clearly thought out.
Mrs. Reed’s quilt was made up of strips of cloth sewn together to form rough squares, in blue, gray, cream and brown, with the odd yellow strip thrown in. They were of wool or linsey, cut from coats, blankets, shirts, petticoats, and were worn and faded. The cover had not been quilted, but tie knots of brown yarn had been placed at the center of each square—a shortcut method of keeping the batting and backing together. Honor flipped over a corner of the quilt. It was lined with brown linsey cut with thin orange stripes. Running her hand over the squares, she pulled two tight to inspect the stitching: it was even without being overly precise.
What struck her about the quilt was the same thing she had noticed about the front garden. The placement of the colors seemed unplanned, and yet there was something pleasing about them. The gray brought out the clear beauty of the blue. The blue deepened the brown and made the cream rich and clean. The gray and cream should not go together, yet they looked as natural as two rocks side by side. And every now and then a bit of yellow popped out, making the other colors seem uniform. It felt as if there was an overall pattern that tugged at Honor’s eyes, yet when she tried to find it, the patchwork fell back into random pieces. Bright, rich, spontaneous, Mrs. Reed’s quilt made the red and green appliqué quilts favored by Ohio women look childlike, and Honor’s own careful patchwork contrived and overcomplicated.
“That a good sign if a baby quiets without you picking her up. You’ll do all right with your own.” Mrs. Reed was leaning against the door jamb.
Honor started. The baby was indeed quiet, still lying on her front as if pinned there by Honor’s hand on her back. She looked up at Mrs. Reed. “This quilt is”—she searched for the right word—“remarkable.”
Mrs. Reed snorted. “That quilt keep me warm, is all.” Beneath her gruffness, however, she seemed pleased. She fingered a strip of brown. “That from my husband’s old coat. Wore it when my daughter and me ran off. He wouldn’t let us go without a coat, an’ gave me his ’cause it was warmer.”
“Where is he now?” Honor asked, and then wished she hadn’t, for Mrs. Reed’s face closed.
“In Virginia, if he’s still alive. He was goin’ to join us later—thought we had more chance just two of us. But he never escaped.” Mrs. Reed reached down for her granddaughter. “C’mon, Sukey, let’s get you somethin’ to eat. Get you some corn mush with a little syrup—you like that.” She picked up the baby, who squealed, her tears forgotten. She grabbed at Mrs. Reed’s spectacles.
“Stop that, you little monkey. I’m gonna monkey you.” Mrs. Reed carried the child into the kitchen.
Honor touched the strip of brown before following Mrs. Reed. The older woman had the baby hooked over her shoulder as she stood by the range, patting her back with one hand and stirring a saucepan of mush with the other. Now she was in a secure place, the baby no longer seemed frightened, but stared hard at the white woman. Honor wondered if it was her skin color that surprised the baby, or simply her strangeness. Perhaps they were one and the same.
Honor cleared her throat. “I must get back.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Reed turned slightly toward her, but kept her eyes on the mush. Her spectacles had fogged up again. “Don’t say sorry to me,” she replied, rhythmically patting the baby’s back. “It’s them runaways come lookin’ for help you got to say sorry to. Good luck with that, Honor Bright.”
Belle Mills’s Millinery
Main St.
Wellington, Ohio
April 6, 1851
Dear Honor,
I’m going to ignore that letter till you write me another that don’t sound like you got your mother-in-law hanging over your shoulder.
Also, you should never put things in writing. In the wrong hands they can be dangerous to people. Tell Mrs. Haymaker that.
You always got a friend in Wellington, whether you want her or not.
Yours ever faithful,
Belle Mills
Straw
FOR A MONTH the flow of runaways dried up. Indeed, Honor had little contact with anyone outside of Faithwell. Though he had threatened to, Donovan did not ride past the farm. There were no letters from her family or Biddy. She did not go to Oberlin, even when Abigail had her baby and Adam could have used an extra pair of hands at the store; nor did Jack offer to take her with him when he delivered cheese. Honor did not complain, but worked hard in the garden, finished Dorcas’s quilt and began another, and grew.
Only sometimes she reread Belle Mills’s letter and smiled.
She was planting squash in the garden one afternoon when something flickered in the corner of her eye. Honor looked up across the orchard to Wieland Woods and saw a figure ducking from one tree to another. When she went over to the edge of the woods and called softly, a young man emerged, limping, to stand by the brambles where Honor and Dorcas had picked blackberries. He was shaking, from fear or something else Honor did not yet know. As she prepared to explain that he could not stop here, she glanced down at his feet and sucked in her breath.
“Please, ma’am, can you help me?” The man leaned against a maple trunk. “I ain’t doin’ so good.”
“What happened to thee?”
“Got caught in a trap.”
Someone had tried to help by dressing the wound with a knot of pine resin, but his foot was swollen, and blood and pus dribbled from it. It smelled of a rotting sweetness that, now she knew what it was, made Honor want to gag. She could not imagine that Belle would have let him go on in this state. “Where has thee come from?”
“Greenwich. They told me to go to Norwalk. This Norwalk?”
Norwalk was twenty miles to the west. “No. I—We cannot keep thee here.”
The man stared at her with feverish eyes.
Honor sighed. “Wait here. I will get thee some water.” She hurried back to the well. As she drew up the bucket to fill the tin mug, Judith came out onto the back porch. “Thee has promised not to help runaways.”
Honor flushed. “I am just giving him water. I will not hide him.” The grim line of Judith’s mouth made her add, “He has been hurt, his foot caught in a trap. Infection has set in. Can thee look at it? There may be something we can do.”
“We are not getting involved in that colored man’s troubles.”
“But—”
“We ha
ve discussed this before, Honor, and thee agreed this family would not help fugitives. Whatever we may feel as Friends, it is against the laws of our government, and we cannot afford to break them. Does thee want thy husband to go to jail? Or thee, for that matter?”
“If thee could just meet the man, thy conscience would tell thee to help him.”
“I am not going to meet him.”
Honor stood still, trying to tamp down the rage that pushed up through her. “I have promised him water.”
“Give him the water, then, and go back to thy work in the garden.” Judith turned and went inside.
The hope in the man’s face as Honor handed him the mug of water was so painful to see that she dropped her eyes and stepped back. “Leave the mug there when thee has finished. Oberlin is three miles north of here. Go to the red house on Mill Street. They will get thee the doctor thee needs.”
She turned away and hurried to the garden, where she continued digging a furrow with the hoe, her back to the man, hot tears streaming down her face. Only when she had finished the row did she dare to turn around. The man was gone, and so was the tin mug.
That night she did not sleep. It was late spring, and warm, though not yet too hot—perhaps the best weather Ohio would ever offer. Honor lay next to Jack, the wedding quilt covering her except for her feet, which she left bare to keep her cool. Jack slept soundly, as he always did after they had coupled. Her growing belly did not seem to put him off, and he never asked if she would rather not. She submitted to his nightly expectation because it was easier to. There had been a window of time when Honor enjoyed what they did in bed, the surprise and novelty and shock of sensation—when their feelings for each other had briefly been like hay. Since the sugaring and her agreement not to help runaways, however, relations between them had become more like straw: dull and gray, the life cut from it. When she lay under Jack, letting him pump away, she no longer found her place in the rhythm of his movement. If he noticed, he said nothing, but fell asleep quickly afterwards.
Honor lay thinking of the man and his foot. She could not sleep, for she could feel he was still nearby, suffering out in Wieland Woods. She must do something to help him, but she did not know what she could do on her own. The Haymakers would not help; nor would Adam Cox, as he would not want to go against her husband’s family. She thought of the blacksmith Caleb Wilson, who had recited Whittier and often brought up the issue of slavery at Meeting. He was certainly a man of principle, and might help her—except that his respect for Judith Haymaker was also strong. Indeed, it would be hard to find anyone in Faithwell willing to defy her mother-in-law, even when the cause was just.
The answer hung like a ghost on the edge of her mind for some time before Honor allowed herself to think it. Then she could think of nothing else. Finally she got up and dressed quietly. Jack did not stir. Honor crept downstairs and stepped over Digger, who lay across the doorway. He growled but did not stop her.
Outside she sat for a time on the porch and waited. If Judith or Dorcas heard her and came down to investigate, she could always say she felt ill and needed air. Indeed, as she breathed in the mild night breeze, she felt sharper, fresher and more resolved. I have been obedient, she thought, and it has made no difference.
When she was sure no one had woken, she left the porch and set out across the dewy grass to the track that ran in front of the farm. A half-moon lit it, and she hurried toward Faithwell, through the trees that eventually gave way to the cluster of houses. She passed the general store, the smithy, and Adam and Abigail’s house; then she headed toward the main road between Oberlin and Wellington. Honor had never walked on her own at night in Ohio. All around her were the overlapped sawings and chirpings and croakings of thousands of crickets and frogs, the appropriate accompaniment for the multitude of stars spread overhead. It was hard to appreciate them, however, for there were other sounds too, rustlings in the undergrowth that frightened her. The bitter, pungent musk of a nearby skunk made her gulp several times, though she kept walking, wishing she had brought Digger with her. Even after nine months at the farm, she and the dog remained uneasy around each other, but Digger would have reassured her with his serious presence. The only way she could cope with the sounds and the dark was to hurry through them, thinking only of the comparative openness and safety of the larger road.
In the daytime the main road was full of riders and drivers and walkers heading north or south, but now when she got to it, she discovered that at this time of night it was empty of traffic and as dark and still as the Faithwell track. Honor stood in the middle of it, listening to the nightlife around her. What she wanted to hear was the sound of a horse with one thick shoe, coming from either direction—she was not sure which. He would not be asleep: if a runaway was in the area he would be out searching, for most traveled at night and hid during the day. Honor gazed up the road north toward Oberlin, then south to Wellington. She could stand and wait for him, but did not think she could bear to, for her stillness seemed to bring the rustling nearer, and made her fear grow. Better to walk steadily. She turned toward Wellington. If she did not meet Donovan she would go to Belle Mills. She did not dare involve Mrs. Reed. It was not safe for a black woman—particularly an ex-slave—to be out at night, away from her own people. Besides, she could not face Mrs. Reed’s flashing spectacles and jutting lower lip.
She walked with shaky steps toward Wellington, fighting her growing terror of the darkness and solitude. She had often felt alone even when sitting among the Haymakers or the Faithwell community at Meeting, but now for the first time in America she really was completely alone, forced to confront the vast indifference of the natural world around her and the stars and moon overhead. This feeling grew so strong that at last it overwhelmed her, the hard cruelty of the world pressing into her like cold metal she could taste in her mouth. Honor had to stop in the road, gulping again and again as if she were drowning. She tried to escape it by turning inward as she did at Meeting to find the warming Inner Light, but she could not shed her overriding desire: that Donovan would come to save her from that metallic taste.
He arrived half an hour later. By then Honor was limp from fighting her fear. She heard the horse with the thick shoe a long way behind her and waited by the side of the road, her cap and the V along her neckline dimly visible in the moonlight. Yet he didn’t see her until his horse shied, a side step away from Honor that made Donovan swear and clutch at the animal’s mane. When he had calmed the horse, he stared down at her. “Honor Bright,” he declared, clearly stunned to find her there.
Honor too could barely speak. “Donovan, I—Someone needs thy help.”
“Who?”
“I will show thee.”
He reached a hand down to her. “Come up.”
Honor hesitated—because of the growing baby, because she had to trust him when she didn’t, because she would have to put her arms around his waist and lean against his back and she knew what that would make her feel. But she thought of the man in the woods whom she had failed, and that made her put her foot in the stirrup, take Donovan’s hand and swing herself up.
“Where to?”
“Wieland Woods, next to the farm. But . . .” Honor did not want to tell him she was doing this secretly—though it must be apparent, else she wouldn’t be out on her own. “Please don’t ride through Faithwell or past the farm. I don’t want them to hear. We can leave the horse near the village and walk the rest of the way.”
Donovan twisted around to look at her. “There a nigger in the woods?”
“Yes.”
“You told me a month ago you weren’t gonna be tradin’ in runaways any more.”
“He strayed from Greenwich. I did not intend to get involved, but he is hurt and needs a doctor.”
Donovan snorted. “You think I’m gonna take him to a doctor?”
She did not reply. They sat on the horse, Donovan letting it take delicate side steps as it waited for its rider’s signal.
“Hon
or, you know I’ll turn him in. That’s what I do.”
Honor sighed. “I know. But he will die otherwise. It is better that he lives, even in slavery.”
“Why you askin’ me, anyway?”
She said nothing.
“You live in a town full o’ Quakers and you go to me for help? You got yourself a problem there, darlin’.”
“There is nothing wrong with Friends here. Many would do what they can to help. It is just . . . the Haymakers have had their principles compromised by circumstances. And they are influential in the community.” Without meaning to, Honor was leaning against him, the small hard bump of her belly pressing into his back. Donovan felt it and stiffened, then leaned forward so that they were not so close.
“Right,” he said at last. “Hold on.” He pulled the reins around, clicked his teeth, and set out back up the road.
* * *
He was not moving when they found him, but lay propped against a bur oak, his legs stretched out in front of him, the tin mug beside him. Donovan made Honor wait several trees away while he held his lantern briefly to the face with its rictal grimace. Honor closed her eyes but could still see the imprint of the lantern and the man’s teeth flashing in the dark.
Donovan came back to Honor and studied her stricken face. When she stepped into his arms, he said nothing, but held her and let her sob into his chest. This time he did not flinch when he felt the baby pressed against him. Honor clung to him long after she had stopped crying. Pressing her cheek against his chest, she breathed in the sharp woodfire smell of him. There was something hard there: the key to her trunk. Donovan was still wearing it around his neck.
If he asked me now, I would go west with him, she thought. For his spirit is with me.
But he did not ask. “Honor, it’s getting light,” he said at last. “You should get on home before they find out you’re gone.”