Chapter 2

Here, we go back six months earlier when Travis Ardon first announces his intentions of infiltrating the underground railroad at his brother's engagement party.

My journey began six months earlier at the National Hotel in Campus Martius, Detroit.

“I found her reading in the park, on a bench next ta’ Lake St. Claire,” my brother, Charles Jr., began his toast.  The “her” in that sentence was his fiancée, Sarah. “She looked lovely, and, because I was fishing all day in Lake St. Clair, I smelled of fish.” The men, wearing their frock coats, and women, wearing their Victorian-style dresses, seated at the tables set around the room laughed at his joke.  My parents sat next to Charles as he spoke.  My father had his arm around my mother.  I sat across from them at the dark, rosewood table, slumped in my chair and playing with the silverware by running the blade of my butter knife into the different prongs of my fork.

My father was born to a poverty-stricken family somewhere in the Midwest and became a self-made millionaire.   He said that he was a logger in northern Michigan before coming to Detroit.  Perhaps that’s where his large forearms and barreled chest came from. But at some point between cutting down trees and my birth, he had gotten rich. “I made investments here and there,” he’d always say whenever anybody asked how he became rich.

He had been in love with the National Hotel since the day it was built. Although my father didn’t much enjoy the busy and often muddy traffic circle it was set on, he enjoyed taking us to its cupola where we watched buggies zipping down Woodward and Michigan avenues and pedestrians shopping or spotted odd fellows leaving Odd Fellows Hall for a good time at the Railroad Hotel. I remember watching with him and listening to the locomotive engine at the old Michigan Central Depot across the circle. It was gone now, but I could still hear the train’s whistle when I closed my eyes. It truly was his favorite place to rent out for an occasion such as my brother’s engagement party.

“My father told me that when I told ‘im about Sarah, he knew I was in love,” my brother continued.  He had received most of our father’s genes " the dark-brown hair, the thunderous voice, the height and, of course, his physique. 

My mother always told me I got my looks from her side of the family.  And I would tell her I felt sorry for her side of the family.  I was a tick-below six feet, scrawny, hairless and had a scratchy voice. I walked funny, and I slouched. 

Esmeralda, the only girl I had ever dated, sat next to me. We had known each other since we were both toddlers. I looked at her as my brother continued his toast.  She looked back at me, smiled and nestled her head on my shoulder.  I let go of the silverware and held her close with my left arm.  I glanced down at her waist-length hair pulled together into a bun.

I knew what she was thinking at that moment because it was all she ever thought about. Esmeralda was growing antsy for the day I would ask her to marry me.  We were both in our mid-twenties; I was done with my studies and had a steady job with the newspaper The Detroit Informer.  She would always say she was “ticking away” and give herself a tap on the stomach.  But I was not ready for marriage or the children that came with it.  I was born with an adventurous itch that I hadn’t been able to scratch in Detroit.

“But I knew on that day, Sarah’d be the only woman in my life I’d ever be willing to give up fishing for,” Charles concluded with a smile. 

He and our father had matching mustaches " thick and black with tips curled upward.

The party awed in unison as he ended the toast, kissed Sarah and raised his glass.

“To Sarah,” he said.

Just before anyone could take a sip, I tapped my fork twice on the wine glass in front of me and stood. 

“Excuse me,” I said as I continued to tap at the glass.  “Excuse me.”

I quickly gained everyone’s attention. 

“What are you doing, Travis,” my father asked me with a clenched jaw and with a stern look.  He always had a way of synchronizing the end of his mustache with his eyebrows, it seemed.  Perhaps it was my imagination.

“I’m sorry to interrupt such an important moment for my brother,” I said, buttoning the coat of my tuxedo.  “But I could not find a better time than now to make this announcement.”

My brother sat down, looking defeated.

“Tonight, I am announcing that after weeks of begging for funding from The Detroit Informer, I’ll be infiltrating the Underground Railroad and writing on it.”

Some people clapped, probably because they felt obliged to do so. Either way, it had ruined the moment for my brother.  Every once and a while, somebody with a head the size of Charles’ had to be brought back down. He gave me a mocking salute from across the table.  I gave him a smirk just before sipping my wine. 

The band on the ballroom stage started up, and Esmeralda dragged me to the dance floor and questioned me.

“How long ef’you been planning this?” she asked. 

“Seriously, a coupl’a months,” I said.

Esmeralda looked up at me with her dark eyes between the dark brown tendrils of her hair that framed her square face. She was angry.

“Were you planning on discussing this with me?”

I shrugged.

“Don’t know why I would,” I said.  “We’re not engaged.  We aren’t married.  I need to do this.”

“I really want to smack you right now.”

“I know.  That’s why I’m holding your hand so tightly.”

She shook her head in disapproval. 

“How ‘bout we get married when I return?”

“Don’t count that as a proposal, Travis.”

Sometimes she spoke to me more like a mother.

“Will you miss me?” she asked as she rested her head on my chest.

“Of course.”  I held her close as we continued to dance.

“It’s a crazy world out there, Travis Ardon,” she warned.  “Just come back to me.”

I wanted to ask her how she knew.  She had never left Detroit.

Author's Note

I had to go through old maps of pre-Civil War Detroit, before the city bloomed, for this chapter. That hotel is no longer standing. Had to look through archives to describe Campus Martius at that time.

Reviews

[nostal]

Haven't read this yet, but the font- American Typewriter?- is a mindfuck.