John was calling her name. He wanted her to go with him to warn Merri that the recipe for snickerdoodles only called for a teaspoon of cream of tartar, not a tablespoon. Then Abby opened her eyes and realized John really was calling her. She scrambled to get her phone from the nightstand and flipped it open just as Kate sat up, mumbling incoherently.
“Hello?” her voice came out in a croak.
“Open the door, Abby,” John said. “Or we’re going to get arrested.”
Abby pulled the cotton blanket off the bed and wrapped herself in it as she went to the door.
John and Ryan stood there fully dressed and looking intense. “Can we come in?”
Yawning through her fingers, Abby opened the door and waved them in.
“What’s going on?” Kate mumbled from the bed where she sat looking part zombie and part sleepy toddler. “What time is it, anyway?”
“It’s three o’clock. Let’s go, Kathryn.” Ryan went to her open suitcase and began pulling things out. “Here, put this on,” he said, handing her a random shirt.
“Hey, stop that.”
“So how soon can you be ready?” John said. “You don’t have to put on makeup or anything, do you?”
“I’m not going anywhere until you explain,” Abby said.
“Now that I know what this program can do, we’re going back to Hickory Hill,” Ryan said.
“Obviously,” Abby said just as Ryan did.
Kate had claimed she wasn’t awake enough to drive and given the keys of her Cruiser to Ryan. He pulled the car into Hickory Hill Lane as far as the gate would allow and doused the lights.
Abby didn’t feel fully awake either. Until they got out and the humid night air smacked her in the face. Something was blooming nearby, giving off a sweet scent, and a million tree frogs were making a racket in the woods. The moon, nearly full, cast its silvery light over them and everything not shaded by the trees.
“Be careful,” John whispered. “Remember how rough the gravel is.”
“Yes, I do remember, John. But what I don’t remember is what’s beyond the gate. Oh, wait. That’s because we have no idea what’s up the road. And we’re walking—trespassing—up the road in complete darkness. And by the way, if Chief Logan shows up again, I will disavow all knowledge of you.”
“Come on, Abby,” Kate said. “Be spontaneous for once. We’re having an adventure.”
A part of her was excited to have a middle-of-the-night adventure. The other part of her realized that this would probably go down as the stupidest thing she had ever gotten involved with in her whole life.
“Besides, the moon is so bright we can see the road just fine.”
“Well, don’t come crying to me, Kate, when you fall and break your neck.”
“If we stick to the road, we’ll be fine,” Ryan said.
“Trust me, I’m not leaving this road,” Kate said. “No telling what creatures are roaming around in the woods at night.”
“Oh, good,” Abby said. “Now I’ll be thinking about zombies.”
“Zombies, Abby? Really?” John laughed and took her hand. “Here, see?” He flipped on a small flashlight and trained it over the road and the trees surrounding it. “No worries.”
“What are you, a Boy Scout?” Ryan said. “You brought a flashlight along?”
“Never leave home without it,” he said, unperturbed.
Although the gravel was rough, at least there didn’t seem to be any potholes to worry about. But the lane was steep and seemed to go on forever. After a while Abby’s quads started to complain. They passed the ruins of an old barn, its roof caved in and door hanging open. Old farm implements sat rusting in front of it. John shone his light over it briefly, but they didn’t stop to explore.
And then, after they came around a curve in the lane, the house rose up before them, bathed in moonlight. Its windows were completely dark, but when they got closer Abby saw that a dim light came through the panes of the front door. Maybe Miss Granger had a nightlight on.
“Come on,” John said. “We can sit on the porch and try from there. No one even has to know we’re here.”
“So how does this program work?” Ryan asked.
“My brain is still mushy,” Abby said. “It will be easiest to just show you.”
Ryan wasn’t satisfied and asked a million questions until John gave in and explained most of the features. The program came up right away, and John adjusted it to 1849. He was trying to take them into the interior of the Hickory Hill Mansion when a man came through the front door and stood looking out at the landscape.
Ryan gasped and jerked away as if to hide from him.
“It takes a little getting used to, doesn’t it, sweetie?” Kate said. “But don’t worry. The man can’t see us. He doesn’t know we’re here.”
Ryan sniffed and settled back against the porch. “Obviously,” he said, apparently recovered from the shock. “Who is he?”
“It’s Mr. Granger. John and I saw him at the Methodist Church in Equality. His daughter married the famous General Lawler. Well, he wasn’t a general at the time. We saw him before the war when he was younger.”
“I think he was also Granger’s lawyer. They were discussing some business deal.”
John Granger took a cigar from his pocket, clipped the end, put it to his lips, and began to puff.
“I can smell it,” Ryan said.
“Just wait until we go virtual,” John said. “Everybody ready?”
“Do it,” Ryan said.
Abby saw John’s teeth gleaming in the darkness and knew that he was grinning. “Okay,” he said. “You asked for it.”
It was a beautiful morning and John Granger looked out from his little mountain with satisfaction. The dogwood and redbuds were blooming in his yard and lane, and green hayfields blanketed his acres at the bottom of Hickory Hill.
He wished, not for the first time, that his salt mine was visible from where he stood, even though it would have marred the pleasant vista before him. The hills and trees screened it from view, but in the distance he saw a wagon on Shawneetown Road carrying barrels of his salt.
He imagined the barrels being offloaded at the Ohio River by his Negroes and carried away by steamboat, eventually to be sold in other cities and towns, some as far away as New Orleans. And in his mind’s eye he also saw his money piling up in the big bank in Shawneetown.
He smiled at his fancifulness and then took out his pocket watch. It was time to get to work. Just as he thought it, Jim came around from the back with the carriage. The boy hanging on the back—he couldn’t remember this one’s name—jumped down and hurried to lower the step for him.
And then they were off down his lane. He spent the time it took to get to the salt mine considering the current crop of problems that his overseer Tom Yancey had brought to him. One of the barrel makers had been injured last week, and now according to Yancey, the wound—on the man’s hand, drat it—had become so infected he was no longer able to work. He was their best barrel maker, too. When he got to the salt mine, he would check the supply of barrels to decide whether he should hire someone new or if he had the luxury of waiting around to see whether or not the man’s hand had to be amputated. Perhaps he should just go ahead and fire him for being stupid enough to cut himself in the first place.
And then there was the fuel situation. Yancey and the other overseers had been after him to make a decision. The timber was being depleted faster than he had thought possible, and they were going farther and farther afield to acquire it and thus taking longer and longer to get it to the furnaces. If he didn’t want production to fall, he would soon have to have more woodcutters and wagon teams to bring the fuel to them. One solution was to pump the saline to the source of the fuel. That would necessitate hiring carpenters to hollow out logs to create the pipeline and more masons to build more brick furnaces.
Yancey insisted they should switch to coal. Granger didn’t know much about coal—either mining it or burning it. But he suspected the furnaces would have to be modified to accommodate it.
There was no getting around it. He needed to hire more trained craftsmen, which would mean a hit on his profits. And he’d have to get more Negroes for the rough work. They were always getting themselves killed one way or another.
Even though the salt mine wasn’t visible from his porch, it wasn’t truly far away, and Jim drove the carriage into the mine yard before he had time to finish considering his options.
He was struck anew with wonder at the bustling hive of activity. Negroes worked to keep the furnaces stoked. Others stirred the brine in the iron evaporation kettles. When the crystals formed on the sides of the kettle they ladled it into baskets overhead to drain and then hauled it to the drying sheds to become beautiful, white salt. There, other Negroes filled barrels and loaded them onto wagons for the trip to Shawneetown.
Granger recited the numbers to himself for the sheer enjoyment of it: fourteen furnaces, each with fifty kettles and manned by thirty Negroes, working seven days a week to make fifteen bushels of salt a day, each of which sold for two dollars. It took two hundred gallons of brine to make one bushel of salt. As it stood so far, it took forty Negroes to cut the wood and fifteen wagon teams to haul it. With the carpenters, cooks, blacksmiths, masons, barrel makers, and the five overseers, Granger was in charge of over five hundred men.
He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he got down from the carriage. He would hear reports from his overseers first off. But before he got far, the beauty of the morning was ruined by screaming coming from somewhere down the line. Tom Yancey hurried up to him. “Sorry for all the caterwauling, Mr. Granger. One of the niggers tripped and fell into the boilin’ brine.”
Granger’s face grew red and he cursed. “There goes another one. I trust that not too much spilled.”
The front porch light came on and Abby went catapulting back into the present. She covered her eyes and scooted over closer to John. A rattling sound came from the door, telling them someone inside was trying to open it.
She didn’t wait to be told, just scurried off the porch with its revealing light and down the dark driveway. She heard panting and the crunch of gravel and was relieved to know the others were right behind her. When she was sure they were far enough away, she looked back and saw that a tiny, white-haired lady stood at the half-opened door.
“Who’s out there?” she called in a wavering voice.
A jolt of guilt hit Abby at the note of fear she heard. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, John.”
Taking her arm, he led her farther down the lane. “She must have heard the man screaming.”
The woman stuck her head farther out the door and looked cautiously around. At last, muttering something about the “blasted coyotes,” she went back in and shut the door.
“Well, that was a complete waste of time,” Ryan said. “Why didn’t you time-surf inside the house instead of following Granger to the salt mine?”
“I had it set to Interior, but the program locked onto him instead.”
“Let me try next time,” Ryan said.
“You can try, I guess, but the program sometimes seems to have a mind of its own about what it wants us to see.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Nevertheless…”
“Come on,” Kate said. “Let’s go back to the motel and get as much sleep as we can.”
“We’re going to be so tired tomorrow,” Abby said.