Charlotte wiped the perspiration from her face and hurried to pile the fresh rolls she had baked that morning into two baskets.
“You want me to take some of those upstairs?” Joshua asked.
“Not yet. We can’t risk the noise.”
When she got back to the dining room, she saw that her guests had wasted no time eating their stew and were happy for the rolls, some of which they ate and some of which they tucked into pockets for their journey.
Unfortunately, the soldiers were in no hurry to leave. Their hunger had been assuaged, but they seemed starved for conversation and peppered her with questions about her family. When had her father founded Miles Station? Where were her husband and father fighting? What was it like running a train stop kitchen all alone? Charlotte knew their questions were friendly. Perhaps they saw in her the sister or cousin they had left behind. But she wished them gone, the sooner the better.
“You should have more than a boy here with you, dear,” Reverend Robbins said.
Charlotte heard a snort from the kitchen. “We’re fine,” she answered. “And I have my sisters-in-law and neighbors.”
“Well, you be on the lookout for runaway Negroes,” he said. “A Negro will rob you as soon as look at you. And a pretty white woman like you…”
Charlotte opened her eyes wide. “Surely, they’re not stupid enough to run, what with a bounty on their heads?”
“And then there’s the prison sentence and a thousand dollar fine for those aiding and abetting them,” Lieutenant Hollis said with a grim glance toward her.
“I apologize. I’m sure the citizens of Miles Station are law-abiding Christians,” Reverend Robbins said.
“I’m sure they are,” Lieutenant Hollis said. He seemed eager to change the subject. “Do you and Mr. McGuire have children?”
“No, we haven’t been so blessed,” Charlotte answered. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a child’s faint cry, abruptly shut off, drifted down from above.
“What was that?” one of the soldiers asked.
Before she could come up with an answer, Joshua stumbled into the dining room carrying the cat she had just seen in the kitchen sleeping by the stove.
“I got her, Charlotte. Pesky thing was upstairs crying to be fed.”
“The cat,” Charlotte said. “That’s good you brought her down then.”
Lieutenant Hollis stood and gave her a small bow. “Thank you for the meal, ma’am.” He took out his wallet, as did the other men, and paid Charlotte. “My men and I will stretch our legs in the garden before we leave, if that’s acceptable.”
Charlotte sent up a prayer of thanks. “Of course, Lieutenant.”
She followed as the men filed out. Lieutenant Hollis paused on the porch. He glanced at the gourd dipper hanging beside the front door and then back at her. “You’d better hurry to feed your cat then.” After putting on his hat he followed the others out.
Hand at her throat, Charlotte went back inside and locked the door behind them.
Joshua, white-faced, stared at her. “What do we do?”
“We feed the cat.”
Abby paused it and turned to look at John’s reaction.
“You’re right about Charlotte,” he said. “Man, she was brave.”
“I’ll fast forward so we can get to the attic.”
“Oh, a movie. What’re you watching?” Kate said from the doorway, yawning loudly. “I thought the party was over.”
Abby nearly fell out of her chair trying to turn off the monitor before Kate got a good look at it.
“It’s a western,” John said quickly. “You wouldn’t like it.” Then expelling a huge breath, he said, “That’s not exactly true, Kate.”
“I think she should see it,” Merri said. “Maybe that’s why it started working again.”
“Beautiful Houses? It’s working?” Kate said. “Oh, good. Show me.”
Abby shot a look at John and then Merri. “Maybe there’s room for one more musketeer.” She turned to Kate. “But you’ve got to promise you won’t tell anyone, anyone, what we’re going to show you. If this gets out…well, it wouldn’t be good.”
John went to the door and looked out into the hall. “He’s still asleep. Go ahead.”
“Remember how I kept trying to convince you we had met Charlotte, the girl who used to live in this house? Well, we found her again.”
“Watch this.” Merri turned the monitor back on. “See? That’s Charlotte and her cousin Joshua.”
“Don’t go virtual yet,” Abby said. “Give Kate a chance to figure out how it works.”
Kate watched transfixed as Charlotte and Joshua moved around the kitchen gathering food. “You’re saying that’s your kitchen, Merri?”
“Yep. See? Same windows and doors. Same size and shape. It’s our kitchen all right. Only in 1861.”
“Oh,” Kate said, “they’re leaving.”
“Don’t worry,” Abby said. “We can follow them.”
Joshua, carrying the stew pot, followed Charlotte out of the kitchen into the dim pantry. She looked around cautiously and then opened a small door there.
“We can follow Charlotte in real time or speed up,” John explained. “We can even go backward in time.”
“Awesome,” Kate said.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, girlfriend,” Abby said, grinning. “When we lock onto Charlotte and go virtual, you’ll be inside her head.”
“It’s like reading a really good book,” John said.
“Way better than movies,” Merri said.
“What are they doing?” Kate asked.
“Let’s find out,” Abby said.
Charlotte and Joshua climbed the pantry steps to her bedroom and then went to unlatch the attic door. She opened it and called out softly to reassure those above. Joshua went up first, carrying the stew pot, and she carried the basket of rolls behind him.
When she reached the top, she saw the whites of three pairs of frightened eyes where Sally huddled on the cornhusk pallet with her two little boys.
“I be sorry, Miz McGuire,” Sally said. “Little Frank hungry. I tole him to shut his mouth afore the man catchers git us.”
“I’m sorry, Little Frank,” Charlotte said. “It took much longer than I thought to bring you your supper.”
Joshua set the stew pot on the floor in front of them and then reached into his pocket for the spoons he had brought. But the boys had already begun to dip their hands into the stew.
Sally looked on sadly. “Just like little fattenin’ pigs. Ate cornmeal mush out of a wood trough at Master’s yard.” She shyly took the spoons from Joshua and gave one to each boy. “Little Frank, Solomon, these be spoons. You eat like real boys now we in Illinois.”
Joshua turned to Charlotte looking like he’d been poleaxed. She set the basket of rolls down and looked away so Sally and the boys wouldn’t see that her eyes had started leaking.
She took the lantern down from the post where it hung on a nail and lit it with a match from her pocket. After adjusting the wick, she went to the other cornhusk pallet in the far corner, where a huge man lay with his face to the wall.
“Ned?” Charlotte whispered. “Are you all right?” She put a hand on his shoulder and he jerked and turned onto his back. “I’ve brought food.”
Rising up onto his elbows, he looked dazedly around the attic.
Charlotte brought the lantern closer, and he grimaced and shut his eyes. The rusty slave collar he wore had caused sores on his neck, and they looked even worse than when he had arrived. No telling what festering infections the collar hid.
“I’ll go get Louie,” Joshua said. “He’ll know how to get that cussed thing off.” Joshua had tried that morning to remove the iron collar but none of her father’s tools could cut through it or break the latch.
“Louie’s a good blacksmith, but he’s also a raging bigot. He’d turn us all in and pat himself on the back for doing it. Mr. Bartlett will have something that will get it off. You go on and do your chores, Joshua. And keep your eyes open for him.”
“All right,” he said and went back downstairs.
Taking a small tin of salve from her pocket, Charlotte knelt beside the big man’s pallet. “I got this from the Mercantile for your neck. Let me—” He jerked when she extended her hand toward his ravaged flesh. She pulled her hand back. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Even as she said it, she realized that the look on his feverish face, before he lowered his eyes, was one of confusion and horror, not fear. “The sores are infected,” she said. “I need to put—”
“I can do it,” he said. His voice was raspy and low. Charlotte wondered if these were his first words for the day. He had spoken no more than a dozen the night before when Jemmy had brought him and the others in.
Charlotte offered him the tin. When he didn’t take it, she put it on the pallet next to him. He picked it up, opened it, and cautiously sniffed the contents. Seeming satisfied, he dipped a finger into the salve and rubbed some of it on his neck.
Sally brought the stew pot over and set it near him. Then she backed away as if she were afraid of getting bitten by a chained dog. “You better let that nigger man eat afore my childrens lick the pan clean.”
Charlotte looked up at the woman in shock. “Why do you call him that?”
“I knows what he is,” she said, settling back onto her own pallet next to the boys.
He didn’t answer, didn’t pay any mind to her, but hauled himself up enough to lean against the wall. He took the stew pot onto his lap and, using one of the spoons still in it, took a bite.
Charlotte moved the lantern so she could see his swollen and lacerated feet. They, too, were worse than before and so huge she hadn’t a hope of finding shoes that would fit him. How far had he run barefoot through the woods?
“Your feet,” she said. “Put salve on them too.”
Charlotte went to the wooden trunk against the wall and set her lantern down so she could open it. After taking out the journal, pen, and ink she kept there, she closed the lid, sat on it, and settled her skirt around her.
“I have stories in this book,” she said, looking in turn to each of her guests. “Stories the people who pass through tell me. Would you like to tell me your story so I can write it down?” Her gaze landed finally on the man in the corner.
He studied the stew pot in his lap. “It ain’t fittin’, ma’am,” he said softly.
“I have all sorts of stories in here. There’s a man in Boston who’ll publish them so people—white people—will understand what—”
“No thank you, ma’am.”
“Well, if you change your mind…”
“I know a story,” Little Frank piped up from across the room. “’Bout Uncle Remus.”
“Hush,” Solomon whispered fiercely to his brother. “Ma’am don’t mean that kind of story.”
“I like that story,” Charlotte said, hiding a grin. “But I want you to tell me about you.”
“You write it in that book?” Sally said with wonder.
“Yes, indeed. Let’s start with your surname.”
Nervously eying the man in the corner, Sally pulled her pallet closer to Charlotte and settled the boys on her lap. “I be Sally,” she said, “and this be Little Frank and Solomon.”
“Yes, but I mean your last name?”
“They named Brooks, ma’am.” Sally turned her face away. “They be Master’s own boys.”
Charlotte swallowed and dropped her eyes to the book in her lap. “Oh. Well, then. How about your last name, Sally?”
“Don’t have no other name but Sally, Miz McGuire. Don’t know who my pappy be neither. But I ’member my mammy. Came five, six times to see me. Had to walk four mile at night after her work done. She settle down all nice next to me and sing sorrow songs whilst I fall to sleep. Be gone when I wake up on account she had to be in the field by sunup or Master whup her. Don’t know what happened to her. She didn’t ever come no more.”
Charlotte wrote it all in the book as fast as she could, pausing only once, when a tear landed on the page, to take a handkerchief out of her pocket and wipe her eyes.
“Can I see what you done writ in the book?” Sally said shyly.
Charlotte turned the book toward her. “This is your name, Sally. Right here. S-A-L-L-Y. And here’s Solomon’s and Little Frank’s.”
Sally and the boys’ eyes were wide with wonder, and Charlotte wished she could teach them to read. She was perfectly willing to add that crime to her growing list, if only she had enough time. Maybe she could find her old school slate and bring it up to the attic.
“Sally, I don’t understand. Why was your mother four miles away?”
“Master took all the childrens from they mammies and give to Granny Peg. She raise them so the mammies can work in the fields.”
Charlotte focused her mind on getting the story down. There’d be time enough to weep over it later. “Where was this?” she said.
“Clarksville, Tennessee, Miz McGuire. When I was growed then I sold to Master Brooks, and he take me to Sikeston, Missouri. But we can’t stay with Master Brooks no more. Miz Brooks hates Master’s colored childrens. She always tells the whupping man to whup Master’s childrens extra. I hear her say Master gots to sell all his colored childrens or she don’t love him no more.
When Charlotte had written it down, she looked up to find Little Frank staring at her, eyes wide. Sally jerked him face down into her bosom and said. “He don’t mean no disrespect, Miz McGuire. Just he ain’t never seen a white lady what smiled at him.”
“That’s quite all right, Sally,” she said, wiping a tear away. “Thank you for telling me your story.”