The Mapmaker's Children, page 26
“Miss A! Vee, Ms. Silverdash!” Cleo called. “Come quick, look at this!” She held up the bookstore’s Fur Fairy, pointing at its back, where the dress was fastened with two copper buttons of a braided wheat pattern.
Eden’s heart flapped like a bird. They brought the Fur Fairy to the box where Eden had stashed the relics from her house. Cleo held the rusty button up to the others. A match. She squealed, and Eden hugged her to her waist before either could exercise restraint.
“What is it?” asked Ms. Silverdash.
Eden lifted the porcelain doll’s head and the key. Ms. Silverdash gasped.
“We—the Andersons—found the doll and this button in their root cellar!” gushed Cleo. “This is what’s called a breakthrough!”
Ms. Silverdash’s mouth remained open. She put a hand out to touch the face, then curled her fingers back into her fist.
Mr. Morris returned and, seeing her expression, grew concerned. “What is it, Emma?”
“The Fur Fairy…” Cleo treaded lightly, troubled by Ms. Silverdash’s lack of articulation. “It has the same buttons, and look—” She gently pulled down the embroidered smocking around the stuffed dog’s collar to reveal a ring of tight, antique stitches. “Somebody’s sewn the dog’s head on, but it’s got a person’s body—like it was once a baby doll. Given the matching button…” She scratched her nose and nodded to herself. “I deduct from the clues that we have located the Fur Fairy’s original noggin.” She rapped her knuckles on the table like a gavel.
Eden held the Fur Fairy beside the china head; the proportions were spot-on. “It does appear they belong to each other—but how?”
“The Fur Fairy was my great-grandmother’s,” whispered Ms. Silverdash. “Mrs. Hannah Fisher Hill.” She fingered one of the dog’s cloth ears. “Hannah and her family lived in New Charlestown over a century ago. My family’s past has always been a mystery. It’s why I’m such a history buff. I want to know what everybody else saw fit to forget.”
She looked toward Mr. Morris, who cupped her hand in his. Then she turned back with her chin raised.
“My great-grandma Hannah and her twin brother, Clyde, were sent west during the Civil War, then came back a decade later. I’ve spent years researching and tried to make it my college thesis, but the evidence was so sparse. All I had was a theory—that they were on the Underground Railroad—based on a handful of badly weathered tintypes and coded letters between her father-in-law, my great-great-grandfather Freddy, and a woman named Sarah. And this—the Fur Fairy.” She straightened the collar so it looked like the petals of a pressed flower. “I knew it was a thing of treasure. When everything else was buried or burned, it was passed on. My Grandpa Silverdash said that during the war, his grandfather worked the Underground Railroad around these parts and dolls like these were used to smuggle messages, maps, and various contraband across battle lines.” She gingerly lifted the dog’s skirt to reveal the railroad of stitches extended down the torso.
Cleo leaned in close. “Have you checked inside?”
Ms. Silverdash placed the skirt back down. “Nothing but cotton. I restuff her every few years. A lady must keep freshly padded.” She smiled. “But the dress and buttons are original.”
Cleo’s hair was down for the special day, but now she gathered it up in her professional ponytail and secured it with the rubber band from her wrist. “So…to the clues—how did Hannah’s doll get the buttons? And how come the head swap?”
Ms. Silverdash shrugged. “I can’t say.”
Cleo gave an exasperated sigh and threw up her hands. “The case of the Apple Hill doll’s head remains open!”
“Well, partially.” Ms. Silverdash smoothed the cheek of the china doll with her fingers. “You’ve helped me solve a lifelong unknown. I am the great-granddaughter of a slave child sent west on the Underground Railroad, and the Andersons’ house on Apple Hill Lane was most probably the station.” Her eyes flickered with tearful joy. “That’s quite something to discover about one’s self and town! And all because of you—New Charlestown’s ace detective—and Eden.”
Eden put an arm around Cleo and gave her a confident squeeze, then placed the Fur Fairy back on the book table. How and why the head and body had been separated was still unclear, but they were certain they’d once been a match. The doll’s story was developing from the darkness. The original face might’ve been lost for over a century, but the Fur Fairy had lived on—been loved by Ms. Silverdash’s kin and made into lore by the children of Story Hour. She could not be her original human creation. Fate had bestowed much more magic.
“Don’t forget this.” Eden extended the key. “If the doll belonged to your family, then this does, too.”
“That’s what was inside the head,” said Cleo. “It’s got the number thirty-four on the side.”
Ms. Silverdash held it up to the light, with Mr. Morris inspecting it beside her. “Looks to me like an old bank box key,” he said.
Cleo thudded her palm to her forehead. “I should’ve thought of that!”
“There could be more documents, letters, answers about my family’s heritage and the Underground Railroad!” Ms. Silverdash was practically shaking with excitement.
Whatever was in that box was Ms. Silverdash’s, and Eden was happy to have played some small role in returning the items to their rightful owner. If the house had been part of the Underground Railroad, then it would unquestionably be added to the National Register of Historical Places. It was a win-win for all parties.
“See, Morris,” said Ms. Silverdash. “This is providential proof! The Andersons were meant to move into that house. Everything worked out just as it was supposed to.”
“Proof that we were right,” he muttered.
Ms. Silverdash frowned. “No, Morris, evidence that all seedlings push their way to the surface. To everything there is a season. It’s nature’s way.”
Mr. Morris looked down Main Street to Milton’s Market, where a marching band warmed up, tooting notes and thrumming snare drums.
“Thank you, Eden and Cleo.” Ms. Silverdash dabbed the corners of her eyes with her embroidered handkerchief. “You don’t know what a gift you’ve given me.” She pocketed the key with a pat. “I’ll be at Mr. Bronner’s bank first thing Monday morning, and you can bet I’ll report back every speck I find in the box.”
“I’ll tell Grandpa to be expecting you.” The band’s rat-a-tat increased. “It’s nearly starting!” said Cleo.
“Indeed.” Ms. Silverdash turned to Mr. Morris. “You ought to take your position with the other tasting judges so Mayor Smith can kick off the festivities. And I must get to the shop window, tout suite!”
“The new diorama!” Cleo clapped. “Ms. Silverdash unveils Fall when the band passes the bookstore.”
“I hope you enjoy it. I was inspired by blooms of late. The first Milton grandchild and…” She smiled at Eden. “New families of New Charlestown.”
Eden blushed, flattered but apprehensive of the honor. If she and Jack didn’t work things out, they’d be a town miscarriage of sorts.
Ms. Silverdash looked around the tent approvingly. “I believe this is the beginning of a tremendous venture.”
Eden took stock: dog treats in rows neat as stitches; cash box polished to a silver shine; Cricket sleeping beneath the table; Cleo in her Sunday best, a CricKet BisKet logo pinned to her Peter Pan lapel; Fur Fairy keeping watch over books and BisKets all. Check, check, check.
Time for the final touch. Mr. Morris brought his stepladder from the café and unfurled the banner across the tent’s top:
CricKet BisKet Dog Treat Co.
Sponsored by Morris’s Café and the Silverdash Bookstore
Cleo and Eden had kept the tagline a secret. Mr. Morris and Ms. Silverdash beamed up at it, arm in arm, like proud parents. Cricket’s doggy caricature shone down on them, bright as the North Star.
“You’re famous,” Cleo told him and scratched behind his ear.
Eden was elated. It had turned out better than she’d envisioned, and there were very few things she could say that about. She wished Jack could’ve seen it all. She chastised herself for thinking of him. She’d been hostile for so long, it felt almost natural. However, perpetual heartache wasn’t a legacy she wanted to continue.
If she was honest with herself, she’d been as secretively traitorous to their marriage as he. Perhaps even to a worse degree. She’d been unnecessarily cruel; volleyed hateful words; shut him out when he tried to reach her; schemed to divorce him while accepting his gifts of a beautiful house, roses, puppies, and unwavering kindness.
Throwing Jack out was the ultimate cliché: cheater gets kicked to the curb; wife cries herself to raging strength, then raises a fist in vindication and moves on to self-sufficient success while the two-timing husband wallows in the awareness that he’s lost the better woman. Hadn’t she seen that tiresome run-on story a thousand times? It was the made-for-TV movie of every week. Fine for the Lifetime channel, she thought, but she refused to be a platitude. Jack was not her father. She was not her mother. She would not live the rest of her life in bitterness—either way.
She loved Jack. She hadn’t liked him very much the last couple years, but even while she questioned everything else in their relationship, she couldn’t deny loving him. She felt guilty for that. It wasn’t what she was supposed to feel, according to social standards.
But her life wasn’t a public relations agency’s campaign. There was no public in personal relations. So she’d be turning thirty-seven soon and hadn’t had a child. So what?
She’d quit her PR career to move to West Virginia and was actually happier than she’d been in cosmopolitan D.C. Who was judging?
She liked eating Holistic Hound dog food more than any fancy restaurant meal she’d ever had. And?
She was hopelessly in love with her husband, despite the fact that he might have had an affair…She stopped. Her breath caught. How could she say such a thing? Feminist blasphemy.
Yet it was her truth, and that was really why she’d come to New Charlestown—to find her truth. She’d been transformed by Cricket, Cleo, Ms. Silverdash and Mr. Morris, the children of Story Hour, and this town that Jack had put his faith in from the start.
The crowd gathered. Families sat east and west on the street’s curbs, squinting under the fullness of sunlight. Ms. Silverdash was right. The sky was blue as a robin’s egg, with only a brushstroke of haze on the horizon. The fog was gone, with the day opening bright and clear and free of regrets. All save one.
Eden pulled up Jack’s number on her cell phone. The trumpets and clarinets, tuba and drums had come together to form a triumphant melody, a resounding trill of excitement that matched the bubbling chatter of the townsfolk. A woman in a wide-brimmed hat, leading a fleecy poodle on a leash, came to their table. A customer.
No time to talk now. Later. Eden put her phone away.
“Dixie loves treats,” said the woman. “I’ll take two Original Pumpkin and an Apple Hill.”
And so they made their first CricKet BisKet sale—before the kettle corn vendor had popped his kernels and perfumed the air sweet-and-salty; before Mayor Smith had inaugurated the Dog Days End, wearing a red top hat in honor of her redbone coonhound, Little Ann; before the panel of baked-goods judges had been introduced and Mr. Morris bashfully sat behind the PIE CHIEF nameplate; before the band had marched down Main to fanfare and a giant town sing-along of Big Joe Turner’s “Low Down Dog”; and before Ms. Silverdash had unveiled the Fall diorama, a miniature Main Street constructed from pages of ornate floral illustrations: mauve-hued balsams and green firs etched with gold and bronze stems. So vivid that when Eden lifted her gaze from the miniature to the real, the trees and doorways along Main seemed to shimmer with gilding, too.
Sarah
NEW CHARLESTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA
SEPTEMBER 1862
It took a week for Freddy’s fever to break. Two more for the wound to cease weeping and stinking putrid. The only one to venture out for supplies was Siby, under cloak of night. Her family didn’t dare come up to the Hills’.
The unrest between the occupying forces had made the Fishers’ freed papers inconsequential. Free or slave, they were a Negro family living in their own house. Siby reported that her father stayed up all hours walking the property with his shotgun, though they knew if he shot a white man, he’d be hung regardless. Better he hang than let evil befall his wife and children, he told them. Siby’s mother argued that she’d rather him alive than territory claimed. She set her mind to cooking off every fruit and vegetable in her garden rather than see it fill a Rebel’s stomach. Siby brought over the johnnycakes, jarred lemon custard, potato and corn pies, molasses beans, and more.
Though they’d alerted their Underground Railroad friends that they’d have to halt transportation and deliveries while George and Freddy were on the battlefield, the Hills’ house remained a green stop on the UGRR maps and pictorials; thus, they continued to receive secret knocks. Priscilla refused to turn away any hand of need. So they gave out knapsacks of Mrs. Fisher’s vittles to contraband slaves and those fleeing north by starlight.
Freddy took only soft grits through August. While he was detached from acute danger, Sarah wasn’t sure they’d be able to save his leg until the morning they found the maggots wriggling out to forage for better feed and the abscess scabbed over. At the spectacle of worms crawling down the bed linens, she’d announced him on the road to recovery. Priscilla kissed his left cheek, Ruthie his right; Alice held up her Kerry Pippin like a saint’s statuette and paraded about the room singing a hymnal. Sarah dared only to bring her hand to his cheek.
“I made you a promise to get well. Now you’ve got to keep yours and paint,” he said, his bearded jaw tickling her palm.
By early September, Freddy was out of bed. His leg had healed, but he was left with a substantial limp. Mr. Fisher whittled a cane out of an oak branch to Freddy’s height specifications, but Freddy was still getting used to his slow amble and instability. He fell often, and they heard his curses from inside the kitchen.
“I never knew he was a man of profanity,” remarked Ruthie while churning butter with Sarah.
Sarah laughed. “He wasn’t, but I always knew there was a rogue down in him.”
Ruthie looked at her curiously, and Sarah realized she’d spoken out of turn.
“Don’t we all have a bit of rogue in us?” she amended.
Ruthie continued plunging the milk without responding.
Sarah observed that while they were kind to each other, Freddy and Ruthie’s relationship was unlike George and Priscilla’s and more like her own parents’: side by side yet distant. Ruthie cleaned, cooked, and waited on Freddy’s every need. Freddy called her “good wife,” complimented her on her food, and thanked her for darning his shirts and socks.
In the evenings, Priscilla read aloud George’s letters, when they came, or various war reports from the New Charlestown Spectator. Freddy’s leg made it impossible for him to walk without the aid of his cane, never mind carrying a rifle in battle march. He was finished as a soldier. That fact comforted Sarah and the women as much as it shamed Freddy. He didn’t speak of his experience on the front lines or his furloughed status.
Instead, he talked of the New Charlestown Church and inquired of Sarah’s studies in Saratoga: literature, art, and the abolitionist work. The latter he never brought up in Ruthie’s company, despite having called the Nileses trusted friends, code for UGRR advocates. Similar to Sarah’s father, John, Freddy saw fit to keep this vast part of his life a secret from the woman who should’ve been his closest confidante, his wife.
Sarah and Freddy walked the barnyard and barren orchard each dusk to exercise his leg. Only then did he openly speak of the Underground Railroad. Sarah’s suspicions about Auntie Nan’s dolls were correct. Where once the UGRR had used them to smuggle supplies to plantations, now they were even more critical to the anti-slavery efforts. The dolls carried Union messages and diagrams demarcating allied homes across battle lines trusted to shelter runaways and Union spies.
“So the Freedom Train continues to move?” Sarah had pressed on one walk.
“Unofficially, yes,” said Freddy. “Though it’s much more difficult for passengers to determine which towns are occupied by which side. It could make the difference between life and death, and the Rebels are catching on quick to the dolls. We had a whole crate gutted, the maps destroyed in shipment. So now we send only by carriage. Mr. Silverdash is our conductor. It’s risky but no more dangerous than carrying live baggage. Still, they’ve nearly got us entirely blockaded.”
Suddenly, it came to Sarah like a cloudburst. “What if the maps weren’t inside the dolls?” Her pulse quickened with the bolt of the idea. “The Rebels have figured out our hiding spot. So we let them continue to spend their energies inspecting shipments and shredding toys. Maybe even plant misleading information inside the dolls while the truth remains as plain as the noses on their faces.”
He stopped walking at the line of apple tree stumps. “How so?”
She put a gloved finger to the patterned tree rings and followed them round, fat to wide, flood to drought, year after year. The last ring, nothing but splintered bark.
“Paint the maps on the dolls’ faces.” She pointed up. “Like the man in the moon.”
It was that time of twilight when the sun garishly clung to the day’s frayed edges while the moon budded translucent and quiet to the east. Both fighting for the same sky.
“The Rebels will be looking for the veiled secrets. They’ll miss the obvious. Like the slave songs and my landscapes. Hair can be painted to look like river waters. Eyes, UGRR stations and hospitable towns. Freckles and rouge spots as safe houses between. A nose, a trusted church, and so forth. Even if soldiers remove the doll’s body, the real message—the way north—would remain.”
Freddy tapped his cane against the tree stump. “It just might work!”
Her stomach fluttered at his approval, and she beat it down with a thought: “Unless the head broke.”
