Caesar scouted a promising spot and they climbed trees, sleeping like raccoons.

When she stirred, the sun was up and Caesar paced between two pines, talking to himself. She descended from her roost, numb in her arms and legs from her entanglement in the rough limbs. Caesar’s face was serious. By now the word had spread about last night’s altercation. The patrollers knew the direction they traveled. “Did you tell her about the railroad?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think I did. We were foolish not to think on this.”

The creek they waded at noon was a landmark. They were close, Caesar said. After a mile, he left her to scout. On his return they adopted a more shallow track in the woods that permitted them to barely see houses through the brush.

“That’s it,” Caesar said. It was a tidy one-story cottage that looked out on a pasture. The land had been cleared but lay fallow. The red weathervane was Caesar’s sign that this was the house, the yellow curtains pulled shut in the back window the signal that Fletcher was home but his wife was not.

“If Lovey told them,” Cora said.

They saw no other houses from their vantage, and no people. Cora and Caesar sprinted through the wild grass, exposed for the first time since the swamp. It was unnerving out in the open. She felt like she had been thrown into one of Alice’s big black skillets, fires licking below. They waited at the back door for Fletcher to answer their knock. Cora imagined the posses massing in the woods, girding themselves for a dash into the field. Or perhaps they lay wait inside. If Lovey told them. Fletcher finally ushered them into the kitchen.

The kitchen was small but comfortable. Favorite pots showed their dark bottoms from hooks and gaily colored flowers from the pasture leaned out of thin glassware. An old red-eyed hound didn’t stir from his corner, indifferent to the visitors. Cora and Caesar drank greedily from the pitcher Fletcher offered them. The host was unhappy to see the extra passenger, but so many things had gone wrong from the very start.

The shopkeeper caught them up. First, Lovey’s mother, Jeer, noticed her daughter’s absence and left their cabin to make a quiet search. The boys liked Lovey, and Lovey liked the boys. One of the bosses stopped Jeer and got the story out of her.

Cora and Caesar looked at each other. Their six-hour head start had been a fantasy. The patrollers had been deep in the hunt the whole time.

By midmorning, Fletcher said, every spare hand in the county and from all around enlisted in the search. Terrance’s reward was unprecedented. Advertisements were posted at every public place. The worst sort of scoundrels took up the chase. Drunkards, incorrigibles, poor whites who didn’t even own shoes delighted in this opportunity to scourge the colored population. Patrol bands marauded through the slave villages and ransacked the homes of freemen, stealing and committing assaults.

Providence smiled on the fugitives: The hunters believed they hid in the swamp—with two young females in tow, any other ambitions must have been curtailed. Most slaves made tracks for the black water, as there were no helpful whites this far south, no underground railroad waiting to rescue a wayward nigger. This misstep allowed the trio to get as far northeast as they did.

Until the hog hunters came upon them. Lovey was back on Randall. Posses had called on Fletcher’s house twice already to spread the word and sneak a glance at the shadows. But the worst news was that the youngest of the hunters—a boy of twelve—had not awakened from his injuries. Caesar and Cora were as good as murderers in the eyes of the county. The white men wanted blood.

Caesar covered his face and Fletcher placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Cora’s lack of a response to the information was conspicuous. The men waited. She tore off a piece of bread. Caesar’s mortification would have to suffice for the pair.

The story of the escape and their own account of the fight in the woods did much to alleviate Fletcher’s dismay. The three of them in his kitchen meant that Lovey didn’t know about the railroad, and they hadn’t mentioned the shopkeeper’s name at any point. They would proceed.

As Caesar and Cora wolfed down the rest of the pumpernickel loaf and slices of ham, the men debated the merits of venturing now or after nightfall. Cora thought better of contributing to the discussion. This was her first time out in the world and there was much she did not know. Her own vote was for lighting out as soon as possible. Every mile between her and the plantation was a victory. She would add to her collection.

The men decided that traveling right under their noses, with the slaves hidden beneath a Hessian blanket in the back of Fletcher’s cart, was the most prudent. It removed the difficulty of hiding in the cellar, negotiating Mrs. Fletcher’s comings and goings. “If you think so,” Cora said. The hound passed gas.

On the silent road Caesar and Cora nestled among Fletcher’s crates. The sunlight glowed through the blanket between the shadows of overhanging trees while Fletcher made conversation with his horses. Cora closed her eyes, but a vision of the boy lying in bed, his head bandaged and the big man with the beard standing over him, forestalled her slumber. He was younger than she had reckoned. But he should not have laid his hands on her. The boy should have picked a different pastime than hunting hogs at night. She didn’t care if he recovered, she decided. They were going to be killed whether he woke or not.

The noise of the town roused her. She could only imagine what it looked like, the people on their errands, the busy shops, the buggies and carts navigating each other. The voices were close, the mad chatter of a disembodied mob. Caesar squeezed her hand. Their arrangement among the crates prevented her from seeing his face but she knew his expression. Then Fletcher stopped his cart. Cora expected the blanket to be ripped off the next moment and made a portrait of the ensuing mayhem. The roaring sunlight. Fletcher flogged and arrested, more likely lynched for harboring no mere slaves but murderers. Cora and Caesar roundly beaten by the crowd in preparation for their delivery back to Terrance, and whatever their master had devised to surpass Big Anthony’s torments. And what he had already meted out to Lovey, if he was not waiting on a reunion of the three runaways. She held her breath.

Fletcher had stopped at the hail of a friend. Cora let out a noise when the man leaned against the cart, rocking it, but he didn’t hear. The man greeted Fletcher and gave the shopkeeper an update on the posses and their search—the murderers had been captured! Fletcher thanked God. Another voice joined to rebut this rumor. The slaves were still about, stealing a farmer’s chickens in a morning raid, but the hounds had the scent. Fletcher repeated his gratitude toward a God that looked over a white man and his interests. Of the boy there was no news. A pity, Fletcher said.

Directly, the cart was back on the quiet county road. Fletcher said, “You’ve got them chasing their tails.” It wasn’t clear if he was talking to the slaves or his horses. Cora dozed again, the rigors of their flight still exacting their toll. Sleeping prevented thoughts of Lovey. When she next opened her eyes, it was dark. Caesar patted her in reassurance. There was a rumbling and a jingling and the sound of a bolt. Fletcher removed the blanket and the fugitives stretched their aching limbs as they took in the barn.

She saw the chains first. Thousands of them dangled off the wall on nails in a morbid inventory of manacles and fetters, of shackles for ankles and wrists and necks in all varieties and combinations. Shackles to prevent a person from absconding, from moving their hands, or to suspend a body in the air for a beating. One row was devoted to children’s chains and the tiny manacles and links connecting them. Another row showcased iron cuffs so thick that no saw could bite them, and cuffs so thin that only the thought of punishment prevented their wearer from splitting them. A line of ornate muzzles commanded their own section, and there was a pile of ball and chains in the corner. The balls were arranged in a pyramid, the chains trailing off in S shapes. Some of the shackles were rusted, some were broken, and others seemed as if they had been forged that very morning. Cora moved to one part of the collection and touched a metal loop with spikes radiating toward its center. She decided it was intended for wear around the neck.

“A fearsome display,” a man said. “I picked them up here and there.”

They hadn’t heard him enter; had he been there all along? He wore gray trousers and a shirt of porous cloth that did not hide his skeletal appearance. Cora had seen starving slaves with more meat on their bones. “Some souvenirs from my travels,” the white man said. He had an odd manner of speech, a queer lilt that reminded Cora of the way those on the plantation sounded after they lost their wits.

Fletcher introduced him as Lumbly. He shook their hands weakly.

“You the conductor?” Caesar asked.

“No good with steam,” Lumbly said. “More of a station agent.” When not concerning himself with railroad matters, he said, he led a quiet life on his farm. This was his land. Cora and Caesar needed to arrive under the blanket or else blindfolded, he explained. Best they remain ignorant of their location. “I was expecting three passengers today,” he said. “You’ll be able to stretch out.”

Before they could figure his words, Fletcher informed them it was time for him to return to his wife: “My part is finished, my friends.” He embraced the runaways with desperate affection. Cora couldn’t help but shrink away. Two white men in two days had their hands around her. Was this a condition of her freedom?

Caesar silently watched the shopkeeper and his cart depart. Fletcher addressed his horses and then his voice trailed away. Concern troubled the features of Cora’s companion. Fletcher had undertaken a great risk for them, even when the situation grew more complicated than he had bargained. The only currency to satisfy the debt was their survival and to help others when circumstances permitted. By her accounting, at least. Caesar owed the man much more for taking him into his shop all those months before. That is what she saw in his face—not concern but responsibility. Lumbly shut the barn door, the chains jingling with the vibration.

Lumbly was not as sentimental. He lit a lantern and gave it to Caesar while he kicked some hay and pulled up a trapdoor in the floor. At their trepidation he said, “I’ll go first, if you wish.” The stairwell was lined with stones and a sour smell emanated from below. It did not open into a cellar but continued down. Cora appreciated the labor that had gone into its construction. The steps were steep, but the stones aligned in even planes and provided an easy descent. Then they reached the tunnel, and appreciation became too mealy a word to contain what lay before her.

The stairs led onto a small platform. The black mouths of the gigantic tunnel opened at either end. It must have been twenty feet tall, walls lined with dark and light colored stones in an alternating pattern. The sheer industry that had made such a project possible. Cora and Caesar noticed the rails. Two steel rails ran the visible length of the tunnel, pinned into the dirt by wooden crossties. The steel ran south and north presumably, springing from some inconceivable source and shooting toward a miraculous terminus. Someone had been thoughtful enough to arrange a small bench on the platform. Cora felt dizzy and sat down.

Caesar could scarcely speak. “How far does the tunnel extend?”

Lumbly shrugged. “Far enough for you.”

“It must have taken years.”

“More than you know. Solving the problem of ventilation, that took a bit of time.”

“Who built it?”

“Who builds anything in this country?”

Cora saw that Lumbly relished their astonishment. This was not his first performance.

Caesar said, “But how?”

“With their hands, how else? We need to discuss your departure.” Lumbly pulled a yellow paper from his pocket and squinted. “You have two choices. We have a train leaving in one hour and another in six hours. Not the most convenient schedule. Would that our passengers could time their arrivals more appropriately, but we operate under certain constraints.”

“The next one,” Cora said, standing. There was no question.

“The trick of it is, they’re not going to the same place,” Lumbly said. “One’s going one way and the other…”

“To where?” Cora asked.

“Away from here, that’s all I can tell you. You understand the difficulties in communicating all the changes in the routes. Locals, expresses, what station’s closed down, where they’re extending the heading. The problem is that one destination may be more to your liking than another. Stations are discovered, lines discontinued. You won’t know what waits above until you pull in.”

The runaways didn’t understand. From the station agent’s words, one route might be more direct but more dangerous. Was he saying one route was longer? Lumbly would not elaborate. He had told them all he knew, he maintained. In the end, the slave’s choice lay before them, as ever: anyplace but where they had escaped. After consulting with his partner Caesar said, “We’ll take the next one.”

“It’s up to you,” Lumbly said. He motioned toward the bench.

They waited. At Caesar’s request the station agent told of how he came to work for the underground railroad. Cora couldn’t pay attention. The tunnel pulled at her. How many hands had it required to make this place? And the tunnels beyond, wherever and how far they led? She thought of the picking, how it raced down the furrows at harvest, the African bodies working as one, as fast as their strength permitted. The vast fields burst with hundreds of thousands of white bolls, strung like stars in the sky on the clearest of clear nights. When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables—this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward.

“Every state is different,” Lumbly was saying. “Each one a state of possibility, with its own customs and way of doing things. Moving through them, you’ll see the breadth of the country before you reach your final stop.”

At that, the bench rumbled. They hushed, and the rumbling became a sound. Lumbly led them to the edge of the platform. The thing arrived in its hulking strangeness. Caesar had seen trains in Virginia; Cora had only heard tell of the machines. It wasn’t what she envisioned. The locomotive was black, an ungainly contraption led by the triangular snout of the cowcatcher, though there would be few animals where this engine was headed. The bulb of the smokestack was next, a soot-covered stalk. The main body consisted of a large black box topped by the engineer’s cabin. Below that, pistons and large cylinders engaged in a relentless dance with the ten wheels, two sets of small ones in front and three behind. The locomotive pulled one single car, a dilapidated boxcar missing numerous planks in its walls.

The colored engineer waved back at them from his cabin, grinning toothlessly. “All aboard,” he said.

To curtail Caesar’s annoying interrogations, Lumbly quickly unhooked the boxcar door and slid it wide. “Shall we proceed?”

Cora and Caesar climbed into the car and Lumbly abruptly shut them in. He peered between the gaps in the wood. “If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America.” He slapped the wall of the boxcar as a signal. The train lurched forward.

The runaways lost their balance and stumbled to the nest of hay bales that was to serve as seating. The boxcar creaked and shuddered. It was no new model, and on numerous occasions during their trip Cora feared it was on the verge of collapse. The car was empty apart from hay bales, dead mice, and bent nails. She later discovered a charred patch where someone had started a fire. Caesar was numb from the series of curious events and he curled up on the floor. Following Lumbly’s final instructions, Cora looked through the slats. There was only darkness, mile after mile.

When they next stepped into the sunlight, they were in South Carolina. She looked up at the skyscraper and reeled, wondering how far she had traveled.