Chapter 4

Travis and Ned board a train to Cassopolis, a city in western Michigan that is a haven for escaped slaves.

The taxi stopped at the Michigan Central Depot on Jefferson Avenue and Third Street. There we were surrounded by the power of commerce. I saw trains entering and leaving the station, carrying products to be dispersed throughout Michigan. Behind us barges and steamboats blew their horns as they floated along the Detroit River. They’d dock and unload whatever they carried from some far off land. The products were loaded onto trains and carried off elsewhere to some other town. Or they’d be loaded onto carriages and brought into Detroit to be sold. And I imagined it reoccurring all over the country. Products pulled, shaped and moved. It was a machine " an industrial machine.

The boats and trains would leave empty, hungry for more products. They’d return to their homeland, gates open and awaiting more.

Commerce was the lifeblood of America. The boats and trains, engines thumping with a pulse, were its blood cells. The rivers, lakes, pikes, canals and railroads " driving inland from the oceans - were its arteries and veins. The ports and stations were its capillaries, feeding and emptying the cells. If the cycle ended in one place, it would die away and crumble. Like a limb cut off from the heart, it would die away and crumble

Esmeralda pinched my side, breaking me from the trance. She had ridden with us and waited to say goodbye to me. After Ned and I pulled our luggage from the coach, I turned and gave her a hug. 

“You’ll be careful?” Esmeralda asked while latching onto me.

“Careful?  What’s there to be careful about?  ‘Couple farmers chasing after us with pitch forks?”

She laughed as did I.

“I’m pretty sure me and Ned can outrun ‘um.”

“Jus’ please be careful,” she commanded me once more.

“Of course,” I said, and I kissed her once on the forehead. She climbed back into the taxi, the driver whipped and yipped and the carriage disappeared down Jefferson.

We carried our luggage into the long, white building and waited for our train to arrive. Minutes later it rolled into the station. As others exited, we handed a conductor our tickets and found our cabin. The train slowly picked up speed as we watched Fort Wayne appear and disappear from our window. We were out of Detroit, heading west to Cassopolis. The train rumbled along the track as we flew by the green fields of Michigan in the late spring.  Because of the long winter that year, many of the trees were just beginning to bloom creating streaks of white as the train drove past a cherry orchard. The train traveled along a dike opening the view to a farm with its green rectangles and crops forming long aisles.

Around lunchtime, Ned and I made our way toward the dining car.  After putting our order in with a tall, slender waiter, Ned asked, “So whatta ya’ looking for in Cassopolis?”

“Not too sure, yet,” I answered. “Jus’ know, or heard, most of the slaves comin’ from the Southwest or deeper Midwest would come through Cassopolis before heading to Detroit. Those involved with the running of fugitives in Detroit said Cassopolis would be the best place ‘tuh find more answers,” I said.  “They wouldn’t go into much more detail than that.”

“Cassopolis,” Ned said, peering for a second out of the dining car window.  “I never thought I’d be heading there.”

The food arrived, and we both dug in.

“Have you ever heard the name Jonathon McAllan?” I asked Ned while I finished chewing a morsel.

He looked to the ceiling of the dining car as he thought. 

“Sounds familiar.  Who’s he?” he asked.

“That Detroit bank robber,” I said.

“That’s right. The one that escaped prison the night he was s’posed ‘tuh be hanged.  Whatta ‘bout ‘im?” he asked just before shoving a part of his sandwich in his mouth.

“I was told he was running fugitives in and out of Cassopolis for uh time.”

“For uh time? So he isn’t anymore?”

“Right.”

“What happened?”

I began to tell Ned a story.

“Have you ever heard the story of the Kentucky Thirteen?” I asked Ned.

“The Kentucky Thirteen?”

“A group of plantation owners from Kentucky were upset at the fact that so many of their slaves kept disappearing.  So they decided to send a group of thirteen slave hunters to hunt ‘em down " hence the Kentucky Thirteen.  Somewhere ‘long the way, they heard about Cassopolis and McAllan’s actions there.  They decide that this would be the best place to nab some of the slaves.”

Ned always was intrigued by my storytelling.  He leaned forward over the table waiting to hear more. 

“Mind you, this occurred before 1850 so what they were doing was not defined yet by law.  The day before they made their way into Cass County, they stayed the night in a hotel in Battle Creek.”

“Battle Creek, Michigan?” Ned wanted to confirm with a mouth full of food.

“Of course.”

“Okay, continue,” he motioned with a wave of his left hand.

“They order dinner at the hotel.  After taking their orders the waiter bends over and whispers, ‘The people of Cass County know you are coming and are waiting.  So if I were you, I’d avoid trouble and leave.’”

“And I’m guessing they didn’t”

“Exactly,” I said.  “In fact, instead of waiting for morning they leave that night and raid the farms where the fugitives are living and working.  They grabbed as many fugitives as they could in a short amount of time, packed ‘em into carriages and took off.

“The farmer who had hired the fugitives sent word to McAllan. The Kentucky Thirteen are just about to cross the Michigan, Indiana border when they see a white man with dozens of fellow abolitionists and fugitives standing in the middle of the dirt road, all armed.”

“McAllan I’m guessing?”

I nodded.

“The thirteen men stop.  Their leader jumps off his horse and confronts McAllan.  ‘Dez here Negroes were slaves, dey are slaves and dey’ll always be slaves.’” I said while impersonating a Southern accent. “‘So ya’ll better move out of our way.’ 

“McAllan doesn’t even twitch.  He jus’ continues to stand in the middle of the dirt road with his arms crossed.  Without a word, he was making it very clear he had no intention of letting ‘em through.

“’If your caravan moves even an inch forward, we will fire on you,’ he tells ‘em.

“McAllan, standing at 6-foot plus, barreled chest and sun-dyed facial hair plus his dozen or so men in perfect ambushing position are such an intimidating figure, the men concede.  The men from Kentucky turn themselves in, and McAllan takes ‘em back to Cassopolis.  Two weeks later, the fugitives are released, and the slave hunters are sent back to Kentucky.”

“Quite ‘uh story,” Ned said.

“But ‘es not a story,” I clarified.  “This actually took place.  In fact, the press was all over it to the point that McAllan, ‘uh fugitive himself, had t’uh leave Cassopolis.”

“Which is why we’re heading to Cassopolis,” Ned caught on. “So this hard, Detroit bank robber " while in prison " somehow gets ‘uh soft heart towards slaves and decides to become an avid abolitionist?”

 “Okay, okay.  It sounds more like something that would happen in ‘uh book, but, I’m telling you, it’s true.”

Ned laughed as he ate the last morsel of food off his plate.

“What if an angel visited him while in prison or God himself?” I brought up.

“You have to be joking.” 

“Oh, whatever,” I said aggravated by his inability to believe.  “I’ll show you.”

“You weren’t joking?” Ned laughed at me again.

 A few minutes later the waiter was back to pick up the food.

With our stomachs full, we walked back to our cabin.  Ned lied belly up across the bench and placed his hat over his face.  I grabbed the notes I had already made about McAllan and went back over them. 

“So what do you expect to do, walk around Cassopolis and ask everyone if they’ve seen Jonathon McAllan?” Ned asked from beneath his hat. 

“Sounds like a plan,” I said as scribbled down more notes.

“Because if this man is as impactful and important as you are making him sound, then I’m sure these Underground Railroad conductors in Cassopolis would keep ‘um ‘uh secret,” Ned said while lifting his hands up and using his fingers as quotation marks around the word conductors.

“It will probably be much easier than that,” I said.  “All we’ll have to do is sit and observe.”

Ned slightly lifted his hat off of his face. 

“Watta’ ya’ mean?”

 “This Underground Railroad moves hundreds uh’ fugitives through Cass County every week.  All we’ve gotta do is find one of the conductors, follow his trail and he’ll lead us to Mr. Jonathon McAllan.”

Ned sat up and removed his hat from his face completely.  “These people ha’f been operating under the noses of plantation owners, the law, without them even knowing of their existence for decades, and you expect to sit, observe and follow ‘em?”

I set down my pencil on my notepad and looked at Ned.

“Have you ever seen a magic trick before?”

“’Course.”

“When watching good magicians do their magic, they can pull off the most amazing illusions, and you’d never be able to figure out how they did it.”

“Right.”

 “But as soon as you’re told how the trick is done, you watch that same trick and it becomes so obvious to you that you feel silly for not catchin’ on the firs’ time.”

“What the hell does that ha’fta do with anything?”

“The southerners can’t find the Underground Railroad because they don’t know how it functions, and they don’t know where t’uh look.  We know where t’uh look.” I paused and pointed toward the direction the train headed. ”In Cassopolis.”

“Whatta ‘bout how they function?” Ned asked.

I picked my pencil back up and continued writing. 

“We have half the trick figured out,” I said.  “That makes figuring out the whole trick that much easier.”

“Well, I hope so,” Ned said and lied back down.

I faced east on the train. In the morning, I had to shield my eyes from the sun. I felt my white cheeks turn pink as the sun entered our cabin. My body warmed.

After lunch, the big, glowing orb was directly above us and by the afternoon, it was behind me, making Ned’s cheeks glow as he squinted.

I continued to watch the green country side whip by us. The Underground Railroad was out there, crossing the creeks, circumventing the kettle lakes and hiding in the shadows of trees surrounding them. I thought about what I would have to go through to find these people, these conductors.

I felt my eyes turn heavy. As I stepped in and out of sleep, I saw a white, translucent face floating on the horizon. It stared at me. It was faint at first but as the day progressed, it grew opaque until it blocked out the green hillside beyond it.

In half a dream state I figured it were the eyes of the Underground Railroad. Perhaps they were they eyes of McAllan staring at me " telling me just as you watch me, I’m watching you.

The clouds in the east rolled in. At evening they turned pink as the sun shot its last rays over the earth’s crust. The sky turned gray. It was at this late point in the early summer day that I realized the face was me, my reflection on the glass before me.

The landscape lost its color and everything turned black. The clouds were out of sight. The night opened its eyes, one by one, as stars spotted the sky. And my reflection disappeared.

Author's Note

I was reading Grapes of Wrath when I rewrote this chapter.