CHAPTER 11
Pier Pressure
The horses reared. Their front legs waved in the air as if they were trying to climb an invisible mountain, and their hind legs rippled with muscle as they pushed backward on the wagon. The axle twisted sideways and the wagon jolted back, cockeyed, hitting one of the pier posts and splitting it away from the plank floor. The horses’ front hooves came crashing back down, and the whole pier shook.
They reared again, and I felt the pier sway beneath us. Frankie got into her surfboard-riding stance, Tom went down on one knee, and Dwina threw her hands across her belly. I danced two steps to the left, closer to Dwina.
The pier’s posts had probably been rotten to begin with. The passage of the runaway wagon had weakened them, and the hole Mr. Ganto had made hadn’t helped. When the horses’ hooves came down a second time, the pier collapsed.
Everything forward of the hole broke away, twisted to one side, and tumbled into the water, moving slowly at first and then picking up speed like the climax of a log-flume ride. The pier came apart beneath me, and a plank hit me on the side of the head. A horrendous screeching filled the air, and then I couldn’t hear because I was underwater.
I spun sideways, thrashing, and the air I had gulped before going under burst from my mouth. I started to drown. I followed my bubbles—they knew where “up” was—and four strong strokes got me to the surface.
I spat out water, sputtered, and looked around for my friends. The only people I could see were Seth and Zack on the riverbank, wrestling the shotgun back and forth. The horses were submerged up to their necks, the water white and churning all around them. I couldn’t see Frankie or Tom or Dwina.
I knew Tom could swim. I had no idea whether Frankie could. Dwina had stated flat out that she couldn’t, and all I could think of was that finger-in-her-hair thing she had done that reminded me so much of my mom. I tried to remember exactly where she had been standing before the world fell out from under us. I picked a likely spot and dived.
The collapse of the pier had raised clouds of silt from the river bottom, making everything shadowy and misshapen. I wondered if Mr. Ganto and his captives had been pinned beneath the rubble. I didn’t think anyone could save them if they had been.
Suddenly I swam into something soft. I backstroked in a panic, at first not realizing what I had hit, but then the silt cleared and Dwina’s face appeared in front of me, the way my mother’s sometimes does when she’s trying to wake me up, all hazy around the edges. Dwina was upright, as though her feet were tethered to the riverbed, her hair floating above her head like her soul trying to leave her body. Her eyes were closed. It looked like her soul might already have left.
My lungs were giving me hints they weren’t enjoying themselves. I dropped down to Dwina’s ankles near the bottom of the river and discovered her left foot was pinned between two of the pier’s planks. I grabbed one of the planks and freed the foot. I expected her to rise, but she didn’t—grown-ups almost never do what you want them to—so I dropped into a squatting position, thrust my legs down with all my might, and pushed myself upward, catching Dwina under the arms and taking her with me.
We broke the surface to the sound of a gunshot. Whether it was aimed at us I had no idea, and I didn’t have time to look around to find out. I took a deep breath, got an arm around Dwina, and started swimming for the shore.
It was a short distance, but I was beginning to feel the way I do when I run too many laps in gym class. I hit my head against a floating barrel and nearly blacked out, but then hands pushed the barrel out of the way and latched on to Dwina from the other side.
It was Frankie. We linked hands under Dwina—Frankie squeezed my hand in hers, and it somehow gave me an energy boost—and together the three of us got to the riverbank.
We staggered up the bank, hauling Dwina between us as gently as we could, until we were able to lay her out on a grassy patch. Frankie immediately straddled her and started rhythmically pounding the center of her chest, performing CPR. Tom floundered out of the water about thirty feet downriver. He appeared to have a fish in his mouth.
I looked up and saw Seth running toward us, waving the shotgun in one hand. There was no sign of Zack anywhere. I realized with a jolt that CPR didn’t exist in the nineteenth century, and to Seth, it probably looked like we were attacking Dwina.
I jumped up and threw myself in front of him.
“We’re trying to help! We’re trying to help!” I caught the shotgun with both hands and found myself hoisted in the air as Seth raised it over his head. I could tell he wanted to use it to swat Frankie away from Dwina, but he couldn’t as long as I was dangling from it. He shook me violently, but I managed to hold on, so he dropped the gun and I fell with it. He took a threatening step toward Frankie.
Dwina coughed and water fountained out of her mouth. Frankie rolled off her, and Seth slid to his knees and scooped Dwina into his arms. Dwina sputtered and shook, and her eyes flew open.
“Lordy!” she exclaimed.
“You folks all right?” I heard a familiar voice and turned to see Mr. Collins, the driver of the hay wagon, approaching at the front of a group of five other men. Seth tensed as they approached, but Collins put up a reassuring hand and said, “It’s okay, Seth; they’re with me. They’re all members of the Friends Meeting. Is the lady all right?”
Dwina was standing, lightly supported by Seth. She patted her prominent tummy, grinned, and said, “Still kicking!”
I had forgotten I was holding the shotgun until Collins eased it out of my hands.
“I sure will see to it that Zack gets his gun back,” Collins assured us. “Someday. He was running so fast he’s probably in the next county by now. Did you pull the trigger, or did he?”
“He did,” said Seth. “Shot went wild.”
“Just as well,” said a man behind me.
“We’ll get all of you north of the river by nightfall,” promised Collins, gesturing to include Frankie and me, then nodding toward Tom, who was standing to one side, wringing out his shirttail. The fishlike thing in his mouth turned out to be the plastic bag with his I-Ching book in it. “But right now, we’ve got two horses that need rescuing.”
“I swim good,” said Seth, by way of volunteering.
“We’d be grateful for the help,” said Collins appreciatively.
The discussion turned to the best way to get the horses unhitched and out of the water. Frankie and Tom and I started taking tiny steps back up the hill the moment we thought no one was looking.
“You think the Time Trombone might be at the cooperage?” asked Tom, sounding like he hoped it wasn’t.
“Either there or nearby,” replied Frankie.
“You need fixing,” said Dwina, catching me by surprise when I nearly backed into her. She took me by the elbow and raised my arm, peeling back the ripped sleeve of my sweatshirt and exposing a wrist that, much to my surprise, was bloody. I had no idea how I had done it. “I’ll clean you up,” she announced, steering me toward the river. “I saw some hushpain growing by the water.”
She washed my forearm, exposing a jagged cut that continued to bleed after she was finished. I squeezed it shut with one hand while Dwina busied herself sorting through a tangle of weeds growing on the riverbank, from which she plucked a spiky purple plant. She snapped the stem and squeezed the sap over my cut, and after a brief tingling, the pain went away and the bleeding slowed, then stopped. She tore a strip of cloth from her apron and tied it as a bandage around my wrist, using a knot I had never seen before. It looked like a flower.
“There,” she said, and for the first time our eyes met. “Oh. You’re just a boy.”
“I’m twelve,” I said.
“You speak well. Can you read?”
“Yes.”
“Never tell anyone who taught you. Miss Butterfield taught me, and some others, and they found out and punished her by sending her away. Forced her to marry a man she did not want.”
“I don’t think that will happen to any of my teachers,” I said. “They have a union.”
“You free?” she asked, turning my hands over and studying them. “Never done work?”
I thought I had worked quite a bit. But I understood what she meant. I had never chopped wood, or dug holes, or done anything to rough up my hands. All I had was a slight callus on my lip that said I played the trumpet.
“Yeah,” I said, “all three of us,” nodding my head to include Frankie and Tom, who had joined us. “You’re free, too, now.”
“Maybe. I’m not one to count chickens. We need to be farther north.” She searched my face. “My Haki would have been twelve.”
“Haki?”
“My brother. He died on the boat, the day before we got here. They tossed him.”
“They… tossed him?”
Dwina frowned and looked away. Frankie put a hand gently on her shoulder and explained, “She’s saying the crew of the slave ship got rid of her brother’s body by throwing it in the sea. He probably starved on the voyage.”
Dwina nodded once, and the silence stretched. Then she looked back at me and somehow managed a smile. “Now you’re leaking again! You are just the leakingest boy!” She wiped my cheek with her thumb.
“I promise you,” I said, “things are going to get better.”
“Oh, yes? You know? You got the Sight?”
It took me a moment to figure out what she was asking. Then my answer surprised me.
“Yes. I do.”
Dwina reached out and held me under the chin, searching my eyes the way my mother did whenever she wanted to see if I was telling the truth.
“Might be,” she decided. “How better?”
“There’s going to be an end to slavery,” I said, wishing I could tell her how her own life was going to work out—wishing I knew. “And someday—I’m not saying it will be total or anything, but—there’s going to be less prejudice.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Actually, you do,” said Frankie, easing Dwina’s hand away from my chin. “But Rose likes using fancy words.”
“They call you Rose?” asked Dwina, and she looked so delighted, I couldn’t protest. “That’s a good name!” She looked down at her belly.
Someone shouted huzzah! from the direction of the river and we turned to see Seth and Collins and the others turning the horses toward the shore. Someone—most likely Seth—had managed to swim underwater and unhitch them.
“Dwina,” said Frankie, “the three of us have to go. You should be all right with these men. They seem to be good people.”
“We can’t just leave her!” I said under my breath. “We should at least make sure she gets safely away from Freedom Falls!”
“Seth is here. I will be fine,” said Dwina. “You three go do what you need to do. Stay free! Never tell anyone the names of your teachers!”
Frankie squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, and the three of us started up the hill. After two steps, I turned and ran back and gave her a hug. Frankie eventually tugged on my shirt to pull me away.
We didn’t look back until we reached the cover of the trees at the top of the hill.
“So, what does Mr. Ganto have?” Tom asked. “A Time Tuba?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” replied Frankie as she bent down to pick up the end of a piece of rope that was lying on the ground.
“How else was he able to follow us through time?”
“He didn’t follow us; he came with us.” Frankie pulled the rope to her. It was one of the clotheslines the runaway wagon had snagged and then left behind during its mad trip down the hill. Most of the clothing was still attached to it. Frankie started to coil the rope, removing each item of clothing as she got to it, dropping the clothes in a pile at her feet. “Mr. Ganto has a psychic talent, so the Shagbolt affects him. He’s clairolfacient.”
“He can… change the color of his hair?” Tom guessed.
“He can smell things that are thousands of miles away.”
“If he came with us, why didn’t we see him, and where’s he been all this time?” I asked, forgetting about Dwina enough to join the conversation.
“He was probably outside the school when I played the Shagbolt,” said Frankie. “The farther you are from the horn, the longer it takes you to catch up with everybody else. He would have arrived at Nellie’s Erratic an hour or two after we did, so he had to track us down and then figure out the best way to save us. I’m sure he loved pulling those bullies through the hole in the floor. Don Giovanni is his favorite opera.”
“Don Giovanni is an opera about people being pulled through holes in the floor?” Tom asked.
“Mostly. Yes. See if this fits you.” Frankie handed me a floor-length dress.
“What?”
“Our clothes are attracting too much attention,” Frankie explained. “I shouldn’t be wearing pants, and your sweatshirts make you look like you’re running around in pajamas.”
“I’m not putting on a girl’s dress!” I protested.
“Listen!” Frankie stamped her foot. “I’m pretty sure I’ll get through this all right, but I’m not so sure about either of you! If you two dress like girls, you can wear bonnets, which will hide your faces and make it less likely we’ll be bothered by more slave catchers, or even decent people who feel compelled to obey the Fugitive Slave Law just because they were raised to believe every law is good and just. This would be a great dress for you; the color will bring out the hazel flecks in your eyes.”
She held the dress out to me and shook it impatiently.
“No!” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
“Look, I’m sorry if this reminds you of your dad—”
“It doesn’t!”
“It does, but you won’t admit it. You’re not the only kid whose parents sometimes embarrass him. Trust me; I know. But I’ve gotten over it, and you will, too.”
She pushed the dress against me. I snatched it from her, gave her an angry glare, and started pulling it over my head.
“Good!” Frankie approved. “These are large sizes; they’ll fit better if we put them on over our own clothes.”
She handed Tom a dress. I was surprised by how quickly the summer sun had dried out the river water; I was only mildly damp.
“So how did Mr. Ganto join the carnival?” Tom asked as he wiggled into a purple monstrosity that I wouldn’t have been caught dead in.
“A couple years before I was born, my family took a vacation in the Pleistocene. An hour or so after they returned to their own time, Mr. Ganto showed up. He’s been with us ever since.”
“The Pleistocene is a prehistoric epoch,” Tom informed me.
“I didn’t think it was a town in New Jersey,” I said as I tried to pull the dress’s waist down from my armpits.
“Does this make me look fat?” Tom asked, turning so I could see him from the rear.
“The apron has a pocket I can keep the I-Ching book in,” he said happily, reaching behind his back to tie the apron’s strings.
I finished buttoning my dress and found I was annoyed by how well it fit. Frankie handed me an apron similar to Tom’s, and I added that to the getup.
“Not bad!” declared Frankie. She had found a dark red dress for herself with a white apron and some sort of frilly collar that I was grateful my dress didn’t have. She turned me from side to side, pulling and smoothing the gray fabric, and then flipped a green cloth bonnet onto my head and tied it tightly under my chin. The bonnet stuck out on either side of my face so I could only be seen from straight on. I admitted grudgingly to myself it was a good disguise.
She fidgeted with Tom’s outfit a bit, then slapped an equally concealing bonnet on him.
“Do you think Mr. Ganto got crushed when the pier collapsed?” asked Tom, gazing back the way we had come.
“Mr. Ganto is a very powerful swimmer,” said Frankie, starting off in the direction of the cooperage. “By the time the pier collapsed, he was probably halfway across the river.”
“Do you think he, like, killed Bert and Killbreath?” I asked, falling into step beside her, wondering how girls could move in full-length dresses without tripping and landing on their faces.
“That’s not his way. He probably kept them underwater until all the fight was out of them, then hauled them out on the opposite shore and left them there.”
We entered the yard in front of the cooperage, where men were restacking the barrels the hay wagon had knocked over. They glanced at us, but continued their work.
“This is where that Chester guy thought runaway slaves were hiding,” I said.
“Yes,” agreed Frankie. “It’s probably a station on the Underground Railroad. Collins, I think, was bringing Seth and Dwina here. Keep an eye out for Killbreath’s horse.”
“And Chester,” Tom reminded us.
We walked across the yard like we had business there, three young girls looking to buy a barrel, or maybe a set of matching kegs to put around a coffee table. On the far side of a woodshed, beneath a chestnut tree, we found four horses tethered to a hitching rail. One of the horses had a trombone case strapped to its saddle.
“That was easy,” I said. “I mean, if you ignore the part with the runaway wagon.”
I helped Frankie loosen the buckle on the leather strap threaded through the handle, and together we lowered the case to the ground.
“It’s too light,” muttered Frankie. She undid the latches and flipped open the lid.
The case was empty.