A CHANCE MEETING
A Short Story
By
Lewis B. Smith
Roger Dunnegan was a busy man. An important man, by his own lights: he owned
three grist mills and a general goods store.
The mills were located in three small townships scattered through Perry
County, in the Indiana Territory; while the store lay across the river in the
larger town of Dover’s Bend, just south of the river and across the border in
Kentucky. Managing his many properties
kept him on horseback for a good bit of every day; he rode from one mill to
another and then across the border to check on his store at least twice a
week. He lived in a growing settlement
just across the river from Dover’s Bend; there his wife Elaine, five years his
junior, tended a household that included six children; four of them were hers
and two had been born to Roger’s first wife, Julia. She had died bringing their second son into
the world, and despite his happiness with Elaine, Roger still missed her every
time he looked into her boy’s eyes.
It might have been simpler for Roger
to live next to his store in Dover’s Bend, but his Quaker upbringing had left
him with a lifelong loathing of slavery. He could not abide the casual cruelty
and brutality of the institution, but at the same time, there was a lot of
money to be made selling flour and fabric and other manufactured goods south of
the river, where industry was virtually non-existent among the rolling hills
and big plantations. So he held his nose
when he was in Dover’s Bend, greeting the slavers with a smile and a wave as
they rode their carriages into town, their pockets lined with the cash
generated by the unrequited toil of their laborers, and he accepted their
payments without demur. To salve his
conscience – which, in his most private moments, he wished would not prick him
quite so often – he donated a fair amount of his profits every year to various
charities that helped runaway Africans establish themselves in the North. Occasionally he was even known to shelter a
runaway briefly before sending them on their way, although he did his best to
keep this from becoming known to his neighbors, especially those to the south. Business, after all, was business.
On this fine spring day, Dunnegan was
riding to the northernmost of his holdings, the Hurricane Mill, located in
Hurricane Township, Indiana – a small but growing community of some two hundred
souls. The road – if the two stumpy,
rutted parallel tracks could be graced with the term – was overhung with
towering trees, and dipped occasionally as it crossed one of the area’s many
winding springs. Once this area had been
filled with native villages, but now the woods were quiet.
The
Indians had mostly been driven out of this corner of the territory over the
last few decades, although occasionally he would pass a campsite where one of
the few remaining tribesmen would be setting traps or hunting deer. The last battle for the territory had been
fought some twenty miles away, five years ago, during Tecumseh’s great
uprising. Roger admired the great Indian
chief’s courage in revolting against the superior numbers and arms of the
United States government, even if the savagery of the Indian’s attacks on white
settlements negated the virtue of their cause.
But the warchief of the Shawnee had witnessed the destruction of his
people and fled Indiana, continuing the
fight till the bitter end. He finally
perished in Canada, fighting alongside the British in the Battle of the Thames,
where Dunnegan had been present, serving as a major of volunteers under General
Harrison – a choice that had led to his dismissal from the Society of Friends,
who rejected warfare in all forms.
No trace of the former conflict presented
itself on this lovely spring day, as he rode through the sparsely settled
region, surveying the woods on either side of the road. Here and there a rude log cabin sat in the
middle of a recently cleared patch of forest – families were streaming north
from Kentucky these days, looking for cheap land and a second chance to make
something of themselves in a free territory.
As he neared the settlement, the number of these clearings increased,
until there was more cleared land than forest fronting the roadway. Then the trees drew back, and the twenty or
so buildings that made up Hurricane Township drew into view. The grist mill was the largest and sturdiest
of these, located on the town’s central square, between a saloon and a lawyer’s
office. No matter how small the town,
Dunnegan reflected, there had to be someone to sort out the land titles and
settle the petty lawsuits and claims that arose.
Jebediah Clements, the mill’s manager,
was standing in the door, watching as Dunnegan approached. He stepped forward and shook Roger’s hand as
the owner dismounted.
“Morning, Mr. Dunnegan,” he said. “Glad to see you, as always.”
“Thankee kindly,” Roger replied. “How is business this week?”
“Steady,” his manager replied. “I just
finished toting up the books for last month and have your profits counted out
and ready to pick up. Of course, half of
it is coin, plus three pigs, six chickens, and two promissory notes!”
“Pen up the livestock and sell them as
you can,” said Dunnegan. “I’ll let you
hold the notes until they are paid off, as usual. Anything else of note?”
“Yessir,” he said. “Runaways! A man and a woman with a baby; they’re hiding
in the shed out back. Slave catchers
came through looking for them about two hours before they arrived. I assume you’ll want to see them?”
“Of course,” said Dunnegan.
“Don’t know why you bother,” grumbled
the mill boss. “Better business would be
to turn them over and collect the reward!”
Dunnegan shook his head.
“When I stand before the Almighty, I
will not have it on my head that I returned any of his children to bondage for
the sake of mammon,” he told Clements.
“I can’t undo the plague of slavery, but when I can strike some small
blow at it, I will. I pay you well
enough to manage my property – and keep your mouth shut about my business!”
“Mum’s the word, sir,” said
Clements. “Just talking to you as one
businessman to another, I was.”
“There is more to life than business,”
Dunnegan said. “Hand me the coin purse
with my profits, please.”
He dumped the coins into his had and counted
out the take. It had indeed been a
steady week, and more customers than usual had paid in cash to have their meal
ground. The Lord provides, he thought as
he made his way out back.
Dunnegan entered the shed and quickly
spotted the runaways. The man and woman were hiding behind a pile of flour
sacks, obviously terrified that he was a slave catcher.
“Come on out, children,” he said. “I have no intention of returning you to your
master.”
The young man stepped out, tall and
light-skinned for a Negro – no doubt the product of a white master’s lust being
vented on some captive female. This was
an activity that all Southerners knew about, but none ever mentioned. It was one of the many reasons why Dunnegan so
thoroughly detested the Peculiar Institution.
Slavers denied the Negroes their humanity until their lust took hold of
them, and then acknowledged it in the most basic way of all.
“We’s thank you foh ‘lowing us to hide
here, massuh,” the man said. “Me and
Sadie done took off when our old massuh said he gone sell her off wid our li’l
baby, all de way down in Tennessee! I
jes’ din’t wants to lib apart from her, ‘specially since we jes’ jump de broom
las’ yeah.”
“Well, you are not safe here!” said
Dunnegan. “The state government isn’t even fully formed yet, and there is no
one to stop slave catchers from coming north and snatching you away. They were already through here, looking for
you, earlier today, according to my foreman.”
He reached in his pocket and counted
out four silver dollars.
“Take this; and take a couple of the
chickens from the coop beside the mill,” he said. “Stay off the main roads, lay low by day, and
travel north and east by night. By the
time the moon is full again, you should be far enough north to be out of their
reach. There are lots of new townships
springing up in the Michigan Territory, and you should be able to find work –
and be left alone. Do you have a trade?”
“Yassuh,” said the freed slave. “Me, I kin shoe hosses, and Sadie, she a good
housekeepah. We kin suppo’t ousselves
and li’l Franklin, too. We jes’ need a
chance, suh, and you done gib us dat. My
name be Lane, suh. My massuh was named
Jenkins, but I doan wan’ go by dat. Wass
yo’ las’ name, suh?”
“Dunnegan,” replied Roger, “but I’d
rather you not use it. My mother’s
maiden name was O’Shea – it’s a good old Irish name. You may call yourself by it, if you like.”
“Lane Oshay!” said the young black
man. “I use it proudly, suh!”
“Well, then,” said Dunnegan, “Be off
with you and your wife. Good luck, my
friend!”
“Thank you, suh!” the young Negro
suddenly dropped to his knees as he spoke. “I’se din’t know white folks could
be so kind!”
“Get on your feet, man!” said Roger
with mild irritation. “Man was made to bow before the Almighty, and none
other. It’s the heat of the afternoon right
now and most of the menfolk are out in their fields, and their women in the
house tending babies and wash - a good time to slip out of town unseen. Now you two be on your way, and may God speed
your journey!”
They stepped out of the shed and into
the street, where Lane quickly grabbed up two fat hens, trussed their feet, and
popped them into a flour sack. With
another bow and several more thank-you’s, he and Sadie trotted off down the street
and disappeared into the forest that surrounded Hurricane Township. Roger watched them go and uttered a silent
prayer for their safety, and then turned to enter the mill.
He had never heard the buckboard wagon
pull up, but there it was, crammed to the gills with the household goods of the
family that sat up front. A tall, sturdy
man, somewhat dark-skinned but with blunt, honest features, held the
reins. Next to him sat a pale, somewhat sickly-looking
woman, and beside them a pretty young girl of nine and a black-headed boy
somewhat younger, who had inherited his father’s dark complexion.
“Pardon me, sir, are you Mr. Dunnegan,
the mill owner?” the man asked.
“Roger, please,” Dunnegan said. “And yes, that would be me.”
“Tom,” the man replied. “and my wife, Nancy. We’re heading west, looking for unclaimed
land. I was wondering if you had any
need for day labor? I’m strong as an ox
and pretty handy with most tools.”
“Go speak with Mr. Clements,” said
Dunnegan. “He runs the mill for me and
is always complaining about the lack of good help. He could probably put you to work for at
least a day or two.”
“Were those slaves yours?” the man
asked him.
“No, I refuse to own another human
being,” said Dunnegan. “Those were
runaways from Kentucky, and I sent them on their way north. Aside from the pure wickedness of it, slavery
is bad for business. Notice how there
are no factories in the South! Free
southerners won’t do the hard manual labor that manufacturing requires, and
slaveowners won’t spare their work from the fields. I tell you, Tom, the future of this country
is the factory and the mill, not the farm! As long as slavery persists, the
South will fall further behind the North every year.”
“So there’s no truth to the rumor the
new state legislature is going to vote slavery in?” Tom asked him.
“None,” said Roger. “My brother is a legislator, and he said the
slavers simply don’t have the votes.
Indiana is a free territory, about to become a free state, and there is
nothing the planters can do to stop it!”
“Good thing!” said Tom. “A free smallholder like me can’t compete
with those big planters. There’s no
room in the south for free labor, at least not when it comes to farming. I came here to escape that wickedness – well,
that, and because I hear it’s a lot easier to get a clear title to land up
here. I lost two hundred acres in
Kentucky due to bad surveys and poorly made laws!”
“There’s a lot of available land up
around Pigeon Creek, about twenty miles west of here,” said Dunnegan. “If you can get up there in the next few months,
there should be some choice acreage that’s not claimed yet.”
“Splendid!” the farmer said, his
homely face beaming. “If I can work here
for a few days, better yet, for a week, that will give my family a chance to
rest from the road and put a few coins in my pocket for the last leg of the
journey.”
“There’s an inn at the edge of town,”
said Dunnegan. “It’s called Boar’s
Head. Here, this should get a room for
you and your family for a couple of nights at least,” he said, handing the man
a silver dollar.
Tom’s dark face flushed. “I thank you for the offer, but I don’t take
charity,” he said. “I’ve always provided
for me and mine.”
“Consider it an advance on your labor,
then,” said Dunnegan, “and go talk to Clements.”
“That I will, and thank you
kindly,” said the farmer. “I’ll do just
that." He left, walking around the side of the mill towards the front door.
Dunnegan looked at the woman and her
two children. She looked more than
exhausted, she looked sick, and he could see the concern in her daughter’s
eyes.
“Listen,” he said. “Take your children up to the Boar’s Head and
tell Hannah, the cook, that Roger said to feed them and you a good hot meal and
put it on my bill.”
“You’re very kind, sir,” she said in a
cultivated voice that spoke of a more sophisticated upbringing than her
husband’s. “Now what do you tell the
man, children?”
“Thank you, sir!” the boy and girl
said simultaneously. Dunnegan patted each of them on the head, and the boy
looked at him quizzically.
“What is it, lad?” he asked the child.
“Is slavery really wicked?” the boy
asked him.
Dunnegan went to one knee, placing
himself eye to eye with the dark-headed lad.
He placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and spoke.
“Son,”
he said, “I am a Quaker, and I believe that all men are brothers in the eyes of
God, regardless of skin color. There are few things on this earth more wicked
than selling your brother at the auction block. Even killing a man acknowledges
his humanity, albeit in a savage and vengeful way. But selling a man? That denies him the very essence of who he
is, his status as a child of our Almighty Father. It tells him he is no more than a piece of
livestock! If that is not wicked, I
don’t know what wickedness is. We call
this a free country, and it is, I suppose, freer than most. We celebrate our liberty at every
opportunity, but at the same time we hold two million or more people in
slavery. That’s wrong; more than wrong,
it is evil, and God will smite us for this sin if we don’t rid ourselves of
it. So listen to me, my boy – if you
ever have the chance to do something to rid us of this infernal curse of
slavery, you do it, no matter how small or how great it might be. Will you promise me that?”
“I promise!” the boy said.
“Abraham, come along with me and Sarah
now,” the woman said.
“Yes, mama,” the boy replied, and
Dunnegan watched as the Lincoln family made their way to the tavern and a hot
meal.
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