Estuary for Young Readers #17

The Emancipation Proclamation became official January of this year, 1863. This is the news both Squire and Luke had been waiting to hear. Me, too. I’ve heard so many stories about how when Luke was a young man he escaped a cruel slave master in Alabama and made his desperate run north, ended up in Saybrook, and over time became Squire’s best friend. He’s a legend around Saybrook.

“Luke comes home, Thursday,” Squire said, reading from a letter, “on the afternoon train from Boston. Nearly eight years he’s been away. Hard to believe it has been that long.”

“You wrote to him about the safe. Did he say if he still has the combination?”

“I’m sure he has other things on his mind, JJ. Let’s let him put his satchel down and take his hat off before we start pestering him with questions.”

Everything I ever knew about what Luke looks like comes from that picture of him that hangs in the church, which shows him with a black beard and lots of black, curly hair on his head, wearing a black hat.

The Luke that stepped off the train Thursday afternoon had a neatly trimmed, white beard and a head of white hair, mostly covered with a big black beret. He used a walking stick as he came down the train steps. “Blackthorn,” he said when I admired his cane and offered to help with his carpetbag. “From Ireland,” he said.

Squire and Luke embraced, then slapped each other on the back and arms a few times the way fellows do, joyful at the sight of each other. They teased each other like Ray and me carry on sometimes. Squire praised Luke’s classy, barbered beard, and Luke asked Squire if he had waited for him to come back so he could get a free haircut. Luke patted his cardigan pocket and said, “Oh, since you asked, I got the combination to that old safe right here.”
I gave Squire a little poke and said, “See? I didn’t even have to ask.”

The safe was still lying on its side, just the way I discovered it when I demolished the old hen house. Ray showed up, and the first thing we did was brush the hay aside and set the safe upright, which took the strength of all four of us. Squire squatted down in front of the safe. Ray, Luke, and me gathered in close.
Luke pulled a slip of paper from his cardigan pocket. “Three numbers,” he said. “Let’s see if that combination lock has stood the test of time.”

“Time and chickens roosting on top of it,” I said.

Luke read out the first number—“Twenty-two, right.”

Squire brushed off dirt to reveal Bank of London in gold letters. He blew at the dust and pieces of hay around the numbered dial, wiped his right hand on his pant leg, spit on his fingertips, then took hold of the dial. He turned the dial slowly to the right until twenty-two lined up with the red dot.

Luke read out the second number—“Six, to the left.”

Squire turned the dial to the left, passing six the first time, then kept turning until the number six lined up with the red dot the second time around. When Luke read the third number, “Seventeen,” I held my breath. Squire turned the dial until the number seventeen aligned with the red dot. We all heard it—a soft click. I let my breath out. Squire used the safe to pull himself upright, turned the big brass handle, and pulled the door open. Things inside were a bit tossed around but Squire said, “Doesn’t appear any water got inside.”

Squire reached in and took out a tiny, blue velvet box. He lifted the hinged lid, showed it around to Luke, Ray, and me, and said, “This was my grandmother’s ruby ring—Ashley’s great grandmother. I’ll make sure she gets it the next time she visits.”

Squire partway emptied a velvet bag into the palm of his hand, pouring out several strands of pearls. He returned them to the sack, “Worth a lot of money,” he said. “I’ll donate them to the Union Army to raise money for the war effort.” There was a lot of currency, some pound sterling Squire’s father had given him when he first emigrated from England, and a whole pile of demand notes which he said the bank would change for greenbacks.

“This all needs to go to the bank. I’ll need a safe deposit box, too.”

We were all so busy sorting through the contents of the safe that we never saw or heard Wayne walk up to us.

“Hi, y’all,” Wayne said.

“Wayne,” Squire said, turning a little too quick for an old man, swaying a bit like he might fall over. Wayne grabbed his arm to steady him, then gave him a little pat when Squire looked steadied.

Wayne put the carpet bag he carried down on the ground, and when he did, we could hear metal hitting metal inside.

“Wayne,” Squire said, stepping aside and sweeping his hand in Luke’s direction, “This is Luke.”

“Pleasure, young man,” Luke said, switching the blackthorn stick to his left hand and extending the right.

Out of reflex, Wayne started to reach out, then stopped and pulled his hand back. “Y’all maybe don’t want to shake my hand, Mr. Luke, when I tell you why I first come to Saybrook. I come all the way up here from Alabama, hauling this here carpet bag, a fist full of circulars of runaway slaves, and a heart full of bad intentions. One of those circulars has your picture on it.”

I wasn’t sure exactly where Wayne was headed with this confrontation, but I wasn’t about to let him ruin Luke’s homecoming, so I spoke up.

“That’s right, Luke. Wayne here showed us a circular with your picture on it and told us he planned to collect that three-hundred-dollar reward when he turned you back to your subscriber. So, Squire wrote out a check to Wayne for four hundred dollars if he’d promise to stay here in Saybrook and stop chasing after you.”

“That’s right,” Ray said. “I was there. I saw him write out the check.”

“I’ll pay back every bit of that money, old friend. I thank you.” Luke said.

“Hey, y’all,” Wayne said. “I still got more to say and stuff here that I brung to show you.”

Wayne opened his carpet bag, reached inside, and lifted up a set of heavy iron shackles, holding them up by one thick, iron ring, the second ring dangling from a length of chain link that connected the two.

I had seen a drawing in a book of horrors once, of a prisoner with an iron ring around his neck and, chained to a dungeon wall, he couldn’t even lie down. I was just a little boy, and I couldn’t stop seeing it.

Wayne dropped the shackles onto the ground and reached into his bag. “I carry this rope, too,” he said, lifting one end of a long thick rope, letting it uncoil a yard or so, then let it drop back into the bag; nobody needed to ask what it was for. “Tools of the trade,” he said. He then pulled out a handful of papers and, holding them out in front of him, shuffled through them so we could see the pictures and drawings of several runaway slaves, the biggest word on each paper often “REWARD” and a dollar figure. “I got this six-shot pistol, too.”

Luke bent down and slowly rolled up each of his trouser legs, one at a time, then rolled down his socks. His ankles were horribly disfigured, scarred, deep grooves circled his ankles. “From shackles,” he said. “My gimp walk?—this is why.”
Luke pulled his socks up, rolled down his pant legs, and stepped up to Wayne who pushed at the shackles with the toe of his shoe. “The man who posted that award did this to me,” Luke said. “Plus, he laid the scars across my back with the lash, and a rope burn around my neck. I don’t know, Wayne, and neither do you, if you would have followed through and used those shackles on me since you never got the chance.”

“I never used them on nobody else, neither.”

“All we know is, you’ve done a brave thing, coming here to face me, and showing us these horrors.”
Luke reached out his right hand again, and Wayne did the same.

For two nights after Luke showed us his scars from the shackles, I woke up with the night terrors. I dreamed about that prisoner in a French dungeon chained to the wall, only, in my dream I was the prisoner. I couldn’t breathe.

Spit! If I lace up my boots too tight, I’m gasping for air, Mum says. I’m claustrophobic, she says. I could never confine another human in irons.

The Emancipation Proclamation is the law of the land now and every slave is due his freedom, but this war is still going strong, and I’ll wager southern slave holders who believe in using shackles, the lash, and long heavy ropes aren’t going to stop fighting for their right to slave labor.

Thanks to Luke, Ray and me are beginning to understand why the North and South are fighting this war, and our sympathies are with the North. Ashley said the Union Army needs good ferrymen—sounds like a job just right for me and Ray, so we’re signing up for three years, so old friends like Luke can be free wherever they choose to live.

Leslie Tryon is an award-winning author-illustrator of children’s books (Simon & Schuster publisher). Five generations of Tryon’s family served as ferrymen on the Connecticut River between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme, Connecticut, and many of those men were named JJ.