Escape Into the Night (13 page)

When she tried to sit up, panic washed over her.
Is the boat going down? What should I do?

Then, through the haze of fear, Libby saw her father. He stood near his table, asking for attention. Captain Norstad looked amazingly calm.

As Libby scrambled to her feet, she found that the floor was in its right place. It also seemed perfectly level. The sound of engines had stopped, but the boat didn’t lean to one side.

“Be quiet, please,” the captain called out in his strong voice. “There’s no need to panic.”

As the first mate hurried into the room, an uneasy silence fell over the passengers. For a moment Captain Norstad listened to Mr. Bates.

When the officer left again, Captain Norstad told the passengers, “You’ll be glad to know that the damage isn’t serious. One of the paddlewheels caught a floating log. The damage will slow us down, but it’s not dangerous. We’ll have you in Burlington soon.”

One by one, the passengers sat down. Soon the buzz of conversation filled the cabin again.

Still feeling shaky, Libby followed her father out to the deck. When they reached the broken paddlewheel, the damage looked even greater than Libby expected. Part of the housing, the arched wooden box that surrounded the wheel, was splintered beyond repair.

Because of the break, Libby could see down into the paddlewheel. Shattered arms and wooden cross-pieces lay every which way.

“How come there’s so much damage?” Libby asked as Caleb came to stand beside her. For the moment she had forgotten the anger between them.

“When the log got caught, the wheel must have thrown it around,” Caleb told her.

The damage looked so bad that Libby couldn’t understand how they would keep going.

Caleb explained that too. “We have two engines. Each engine runs a different wheel. We’ll make it to Burlington with the engine and paddlewheel on the other side.”

Caleb no longer looked angry, but now he dropped his voice. “Don’t forget what I said last night.”

“About Jordan?” Libby spoke in a whisper, but even so, Caleb shushed her.

“It’s his life, you know. Don’t tell anyone besides your father. Not even one other person.”

A thousand questions leaped to Libby’s lips.
It’s okay that I told Pa? Then why can’t I tell anyone else?
As Libby left to check on Samson, she wondered about it.

When she found that the dog was all right, Libby went to
her father’s cabin. Though she knew he had to make plans for the broken paddlewheel, she felt impatient about every moment of delay. Soon after she heard an engine start, the captain entered his cabin.

Caleb was not far behind. “Do you still want to see the black book?”

When Captain Norstad nodded, Caleb hurried out. Soon he returned.

“This is Jordan Parker,” Caleb said as he brought the tall young man into the room.

Jordan’s new-looking pants dragged on the floor, almost covering his bare feet.
Do those long pants hide wounds left by the leg-irons?
Libby wondered.

“Jordan wants to stay on the
Christina,”
Caleb went on.

“You know it’s dangerous,” the captain told Jordan.

The young man nodded. “Yes, sir.” As though he were still on the courthouse steps, he stood straight and tall. Yet he kept his gaze on the floor.

“If we let you off in Quincy or some other place in Illinois, you could cross the state on the Underground Railroad. At Lake Michigan a steamer captain would take you to a place where you could pass into Canada. You would have your freedom.”

Suddenly all of Libby’s scared thoughts came rushing back.
If Jordan is found
—The danger frightened her. Yet Pa and Caleb and Jordan—none of them acted as if something unusual was going on.

“Why do you want to stay on the boat?” the captain asked Jordan.

“Before Christmas, sir, Old Massa sell my daddy. Momma
and me—we ain’t got no idea where he is. But we wants to run away before Old Massa sell the rest of us. Before he take my sisters and my brother and pull them from my momma’s arms.”

Libby flinched.

“While I tries to find a way for us to run, Old Massa sell Momma and my sisters and my brother. Sells them up north from where I is. While I still thinkin’ how to collect them and run, Old Massa dies.”

“So you were sold in Saint Louis?” Captain Norstad asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Jordan escaped from his new master,” Caleb explained. “The slave trader Riggs.”

“Riggs?” A grieved, angry look crossed the captain’s face. “You got away from Riggs?”

“Yes, sir. And now I wants to go back, sir.”

“To a man like Riggs?” Captain Norstad sounded puzzled.

Jordan shook his head, but he still looked at the floor. “No, sir. I wants to find my momma and my sisters and my brother to bring them out. Momma can’t do it by herself. I needs to bring them cross the river.”

“To the Promised Land?” Libby’s father seemed to know the answer.

But Libby wondered about it. The Mississippi River flowed between the slave state of Missouri and the free state of Illinois. Was that what Pa meant?

Then she remembered. Long ago, Ma had taught her about Moses taking the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Forty years later, Joshua led them across the Jordan River into Canaan, the Promised Land.

A smile broke across Jordan’s face. “Yes, sir. When I was
born, Momma call me Jordan. I was jist a little boy when she say, ‘Jordan, you is goin’ to take our people cross the river. You is goin’ to lead our people to the Promised Land.’

“‘What you mean, Momma?’ I ask her. Before long, I didn’t need to ask no more. I believed what my momma tell me would be true.”

As though Libby still saw Jordan on the courthouse steps, she remembered. Somehow she had sensed that he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
Purpose
, she called it.
Jordan has a sense of purpose
.

Captain Norstad leaned forward. “How were you and your mother going to reach the Promised Land?”

“We was goin’ to follow the North Star, sir. We was goin’ to find the men with the broad-brim hats. Momma say, ‘If we gits there, we be safe. Those men with broad-brim hats, they show us how we git to the Promised Land.’”

“And now?” the captain asked. “What’s your plan?”

“Caleb say we is goin’ near the people with the broad-brim hats.”

“The Quakers at Salem, Iowa?” Captain Norstad asked.

Caleb nodded.

“I wants to go there, sir. I wants to know if Momma got my family out.”

“But what if they aren’t in Salem?” The captain’s dark eyes looked worried. “There’ll be slave catchers looking for you. They’ll know that if they haven’t found you in Missouri, you’ll be in Iowa or Illinois. There must be a huge reward on your head.”

Still looking at the floor, Jordan shrugged.

“There’s a big risk that you’ll be taken back into slavery,”
the captain warned. “If you leave the boat, I can’t protect you.”

For the first time Jordan forgot himself and looked up. “It’s a risk I gots to take, sir. How can I be free when my family ain’t?”

When the room fell silent, Captain Norstad stood up and paced around the table. From long experience, Libby knew that he was thinking.

Finally he stopped in front of Jordan. “I need another cabin boy like Caleb. Would you like the job?”

Astonishment spread across Jordan’s face. “Yes, sir! Then I can stay?”

“You can stay. If anyone asks what you’re doing here, tell them you’re my cabin boy. For every day you work, I’ll give you a day’s wages.”

“You
pay
me, sir?” Jordan looked as though he couldn’t believe such an offer. “You foolin’ me, sir?”

Captain Norstad shook his head. “But there’s something you have to promise me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whenever we come into port, you go down and help Mr. Osborne. He’s the man who works where Caleb took off your leg-irons.”

The engine room
, Libby thought.
Where Jordan is out of sight from people on shore
.

The quick flash of understanding in Jordan’s eyes told Libby that he knew exactly what the captain was saying.

When Caleb and Jordan left the room, Libby stayed at the table. There was a thought she couldn’t push aside.
Caleb knows Pa better than I do!

Again Libby felt a twinge of jealousy. She wasn’t sure what to do about it. She only wanted to make up for all the time she and her father had lost.

“Pa?” Libby asked. There was something she needed to say, but she didn’t know where to begin. “You know what you told me before?”

So much had happened between then and now, but Captain Norstad understood. “That I love you.”

“I love you, too, Pa,” Libby said.

When her father opened his arms, she walked into his big hug. Libby felt glad that he had given her the words to say.

Often the
Christina
logged ten miles an hour going up-river. Now, with the use of only one paddlewheel, she seemed to limp along. Yet the rudder held her straight against the current.

Later that afternoon, as Libby rounded the texas, she came up behind Caleb and Jordan. Away from passengers and most of the crew, Jordan had his shirt off. On the sunny side of the deck, he sat with his back turned to the warm spring sun.

As Libby watched, Caleb dipped a cloth into a bowl of clean water. When Libby started to back away, he called to her. “It’s all right,” he said quickly. “You can come.”

In a few more steps Libby saw what Caleb was doing. Gently he washed the great open wounds that crisscrossed Jordan’s back.

Libby gasped.
Whip marks!

Turning, Jordan looked up in her face. “I don’t want no pity.”

“You don’t have my pity,” Libby answered quickly. “You
have my respect.”
And my sadness
, she added to herself.

“Riggs beat him,” Caleb explained.

Libby didn’t have to be told. The red lines crossed Jordan’s back, as if the whip had been laid one way, then another.
Is that what happened in just one night of being owned by Riggs?

Feeling as though she could barely breathe, Libby remembered what she had said about slavery.
How could I be so stupid?
Though Jordan didn’t know what she had said, Libby wanted to tell him she was sorry. But she couldn’t get out the words.

“Don’t you hate Riggs?” she asked instead.

She wanted to close her eyes, to run away from the sight of Jordan’s back. Yet somehow Libby knew Caleb was testing her about something she didn’t understand. If she was going to pass that test, she had to stay.

Just the same, Libby walked around in front of Jordan where she couldn’t see his back. “Don’t you hate Riggs?” she asked again.

“I wants to be angry.” Jordan didn’t look at her.

His words reminded Libby of the one small flash of resentment she had seen at the auction.

“I wants to hate him with all my soul—” Jordan went on, “But if I hate him—”

Even sitting on the deck, Jordan looked tall. He held his hand about three feet above the boards. “When I was jist so high, my daddy say to me, ‘Jordan, you is goin’ to git lots of hurts in life. No matter what happens to you, don’t you hate.’”

“Don’t hate?” Libby blurted out. How could Jordan help but hate someone who had whipped him this way?

“‘Jordan,’ my daddy say, ‘hatin’ robs your bones of strength,
makes you blind when you needs to fight. If you forgive, you be strong.’”

“Forgive? When someone treats you like that?” Without warning, tears welled up in Libby’s eyes.

She tried to speak, to say that she was sorry for what had happened to Jordan. Again, she couldn’t find the words.

But Caleb tried. “I don’t know if I could forgive that way.”

Turning, Jordan looked up at him. “You could, Massa Caleb. If you ain’t got no choice, you could.”

“But how?” Even to her own ears, Libby’s voice sounded faint with the impossibility of it.

“I tells myself I is goin’ to forgive,” Jordan answered. “With every lash of the whip I whisper to myself, ‘I forgives you, white man.’ Then I remember what my momma say long ago. ‘No one else is goin’ to suffer like this. Jordan, you is goin’ to take your people out of Egypt.’”