Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

It was nearly dawn, and the moon had long since set behind us, when we finally exited from the woods south of Indian Pass and approached the mines and furnaces of Tahawus and the settlement that surrounded them. We were making our way down a long, rock-strewn slope that appeared to have been burned clear in recent years.

Hovering over the marshes and stream below us, a pale haze reflected back the morning light, with the dark, pointed tips of tall pines poking through. The village was an encampment, made up mostly of shanties for the Irish miners which, in their sad disarray and impoverishment, reminded me of the shanties of Timbuctoo, and as we passed by, we could see the miners emerging from their cold, damp hovels — gaunt, grim, gray-faced men and boys rising to begin their long day’s work in the darkness of the earth. Behind them, standing at the door or hauling water or building an outdoor cookfire, were their brittle-looking women, downtrodden creatures in shabby sack frocks who looked too old to have given birth to the babies they carried on their bony hips.

They barely looked up at us as we passed, so borne down by their labors were they. We fell silent, as if out of respect — two white men and two black men carrying rifles come from the woods, led by the son of the company superintendent. As we passed close to the open door of one of the shacks, Father touched the brim of his palm-leaf hat and nodded to a woman who stood there and seemed to be watching us, her round Irish face impassive, expressionless, all but dead to us. “Good morning, m’am,” Father said in a soft voice. She made no response. Her eyes were pale green and glowed coldly in the dim light of the dawn but seemed to see nothing. She looked like a woman who had been cast off and left like trash by an invading army.

The haze from the stream below had risen along the slope to the village, slowly enveloping it, erasing from our sight one by one the shanties and the poor, sullen souls who lived there, following us like a pale beast as we made our way along the muddy track that ran through the encampment. When we reached the further edge, we saw ahead of us, situated on a pleasant rise of land, a proper house with a porch and an attached barn, the home of the supervisor of the mines, Mr. Jonas Wilkinson. There I turned and, for an instant, looked back, and the miners’ camp was gone, swallowed by the fog.

Mr. Wilkinson told us, “They run off to a surprising degree, the Irish. Though they’ve got nothing to run to, except back to the wharfs of Boston or New York. A lot of them are sickly by the time they get here and end up buried in the field yonder. They’re a sad lot.” Mr. Wilkinson was a round, blotch-faced man with thinning black hair and a porous-looking red nose that suggested a long-indulged affection for alcohol. “Ignorant and quarrelsome and addicted to drink,” he said. “The females as much as the men. And you can’t do much to improve them. Although my wife and I have certainly given it a try, she by schooling the little ones and me by preaching every Sunday to them that will listen. But they breed faster than you can teach them, and when it comes to proper religion, Mister Brown, they’re practically pagans. Superstitious papists without a priest is what they are. I’ve about given up on ‘em and just try now to get as much work out of’em with as little expense as possible before they run off, or die.

“Sorry for sounding so harsh,” he said to Father, who sat on a straight chair and grimly regarded the floor. “But what you’ve got with these Irish is the dead ends of European peasantry. There’s little for them in this country. Little enough for them back there in their own country, I suppose,“he added, pulling on his chin. “Which, of course, is why they come over in the first place. For them, poor souls, I suppose it’s an improvement. They get to start their lives over.”

Father stood then and said to Mrs. Wilkinson, who was putting a substantial breakfast on the table for us, “M’am, if you don’t mind, I believe we’ll eat with the Negroes in the barn and then rest there until nightfall.”

“I sense that I’ve offended you, Mister Brown,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “No, sir. No, you haven’t,” the Old Man answered. “I am curious, though, as to your reasons for agreeing to aid us in our efforts to carry Negro slaves off to Canada, when you appear to have so little fellow-feeling for the poor indentured men and women in your charge here.”

“Ah!” Mr. Wilkinson said brightly — he’d heard this argument before and was prepared, even eager, to answer it. “Slavery is evil! That alone is reason enough for a Christian man to want to aid and abet you. But beyond that, slavery provides the Southerners with an unfair advantage in the labor market. No, sir, for the economic health of our nation, we all must do what we can to bring about the end of slave labor. And this is simply my small part, aiding you and your son and your Negro friends here, and your friend the famous Mister Douglass.”

He pointed out that every one of his Irish miners had freely contracted to work here, just as he himself had, and when their terms were over and they had met the requirements of their contracts, they were free to go. Indeed, many of them, he said, chose not to leave and continued on here in the mines. This was not slavery, he said, smiling broadly. “Your Negroes know the difference, I’m sure, if you and your son do not. Ask the Negroes which they would prefer. Slavery in the South, or working as a free man here in the iron mines of Tahawus?” He looked to Mr. Fleete and Lyman, as if for an answer, but they remained expressionless.

Father simply said, “I see. Well, I am grateful to you for your help and for your kindness to us. But I do think, all the same, that we’ll take ourselves to the barn now, for I wish to speak with our poor passengers out there, who are no doubt feeling anxious about their situation and require from us a bit of reassurance. They are, after all, in the hands of strangers and in a strange land.”

Eagerly, and evidently pleased that he had made himself understood if not admired, Mr. Wilkinson escorted us from the room, leading us through a narrow woodshed that connected to the barn. He said that he would send his wife along with our breakfast and pointed us towards the hayloft above, where we saw looking nervously down at us the faces of the man and woman who had been hidden there the previous night.

As soon as Mr. Wilkinson had left us, Mr. Fleete stepped forward in the dark room, smiled up at the young man and woman, and said his own name, then introduced Lyman Epps, Father, and me, in that order. “It’s safe to come down,” Mr. Fleete assured the fugitives. “Help them down,” he said to Lyman, who scrambled up the ladder and assisted first the woman and then the man in descending to the floor of the barn, where we all somberly shook hands. After weeks of running from the hounds of slavery, of trusting white and Negro strangers not to betray them, of hiding out in ditches and under bridges and trestles, of going days and nights without food or sleep, they were almost too tired to be frightened — but, nonetheless, their eyes darted warily from one of us to the other, for who knew, this could be no more than a white man’s clever trap.

Then suddenly, before anyone had a chance to speak and reassure them, Mrs. Wilkinson entered from the house, carrying a tray of corn bread and eggs and smoked pork and a pitcher of fresh milk. “I’ll be sure that no one disturbs you,” she said cheerfully, and headed back into the house.

Father looked at me, clear irritation on his face. “Disturb us?” he said in a low voice. “These Wilkinsons have it all wrong. They can’t be trusted.”

I knew that, as soon as we got back to North Elba, the Old Man would cut their link from the chain. And with no stationmaster to replace them, the line from the Deep South to here to Timbuctoo would be broken. Better, I thought, to let the Wilkinsons continue to have it all wrong and keep the Railroad running than to try to teach them what’s right by putting them off it.