Will Hannah Be Free Now?​

Issue 18

         With one last rumble over a cattle guard, the shock absorber-punishing ride turned smooth. A paved road meant they were across the border. More than two hours racing along dirt and gravel, and bouncing across fields and creeks lay behind the eight people packed into the rear of the Jeep. Still, the trip had been warmer and no more uncomfortable than the previous night spent huddled together under thick wool blankets in a remote mobile home surrounded by drifting snow and a wind chill well below zero. The stove and stacked kindling had beckoned, but they’d been afraid to build a fire for fear the smoke might be seen.
         “Do we know anything about the driver they’re sending?” a women had asked. “What if this is a trap?”
         The lone man in the group lay a wet cloth across a feverish woman’s forehead. “It can’t be a trap. This is my wife’s only chance.”
         “Stay calm,” Emily had said. “If this was a trap, it would have sprung before now.”
         They rode for another twenty minutes. When the Jeep slowed to a stop, snow flurries and the outline of buildings were visible in the glow of streetlights. The driver stepped out, and moved toward the rear of the vehicle. “Bonjour, mes amis,” he called to a cluster of people clad in heavy parkas. “We need a nurse and a stretcher.”
         A man and a woman in white parkas bearing medical service badges lifted the feverish woman onto a gurney. They wheeled her across the parking lot toward a single-story brick building. The woman’s husband walked alongside holding her hand. Emily stepped from the Jeep with a carry-on suitcase, the emergency departure bag she’d packed eight months earlier. The others carried an assortment of duffle bags and backpacks. Everything they now owned unless they’d been able to transfer money into an overseas account before fleeing. Emily had moved her savings the week she packed her bag.
         A woman in a red parka motioned Emily to step aside. A second man in white led the other women in the direction taken by the gurney.
         “Please tell me that woman will make it,” the driver said. “I pushed as fast as I dared.”
         “She is in good hands,” a man in a red parka said. “Go inside. Get a bowl of chowder and some sleep.”
         The driver slid back into the Jeep, and put the vehicle in gear. “Coffee and a quick bowl. I must get back. There are so many.”
         “You will not help those many if you fall asleep at the wheel, Michael.”
         “Senator Urbina?” The woman in red spoke with a French accent. She offered her hand. “I am Staff Sergeant Pink.”
         Emily shook the woman’s hand, and turned to watch the building door close behind the gurney. “That woman has lost a lot of blood.”
         “A nurse is with her, Senator. And the others you saw are paramedics. She will be transported to a hospital as soon as she is stable.”
         “Thank you,” Emily said. “And I’m not a senator anymore.”
         Pink gestured toward the man in the red parka. “This is Constable Jackson.”
         Emily nodded to him. “I have Jacksons in my family tree if you go back far enough. But I doubt we’re related.”
         “I’d like to say welcome,” Pink said, “though I know you didn’t plan to make this trip.”
         Former Senator Emily Urbina had stayed as long as she dared, had believed the worst might yet be averted. Believed it wouldn’t do to have a senator panic and flee. Coups happened in other nations. Less advanced nations. She’d been wrong. Elimination of rights had occurred at a rapid pace, the Constitution revised in less than a month. Armed supremacist militias supported by sympathetic military and police beat and intimidated any opposition. The death toll, if known, had been concealed. Emily recalled family stories about a great-grandmother times five—or was it six?—who escaped slavery with her daughter during the Civil War. She didn’t know their names. She’d never imagined having to make her own escape. Going into exile happened in other nations. She’d been wrong about that as well.
         “I’m appreciative of the refuge,” Emily said. “The driver who brought us across? I didn’t have a chance to thank him. Is he one of your people?”
         “No,” Pink said. “That would create problems should he be caught on your side of the border. He coordinates with the aid organizations.”
         “He takes quite a risk. The penalties . . .”
         Pink tightened her lips. “Michael had a niece. His sister’s daughter. Six months ago, she bled to death in a hospital parking lot in Texas. While her husband begged for help. Michael accepts the risk, but I’m afraid our options are limited if he’s caught.”
         Emily gazed at the night sky, hands on her hips, and sighed. “And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
         “Pardon?”
         “Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. Seems an apt description.”
         “We had hoped you would turn back from the darkness.”
         Emily shook her head. “Too many failed to understand. There was no action the so-called apostles considered unacceptable. They generated monstrous levels of hate and nihilism among their supporters. I sent Hannah out eight months ago. My daughter. Among the last allowed to leave. Even then she had to prove . . . her medical status, so to speak. I should have had the sense to go with her. Two months later, I was barred from voting or holding office.”
         Pink nodded toward a waiting police responder pickup. “Constable Jackson will escort you on the next leg of your trip. He will explain the details on the way.”
         “What about the others I arrived with?”
         “They will pass through regular processing.”
         “Are they safe here? If you’re in a hurry to get me out?”
         “They are safe. None of you are in immediate danger now that you’re across the border. But you are much higher profile. If your government discovers you’re here . . .”
         Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. “My presence may put the others at greater risk.”
         “We will get enormous pressure to extradite. We won’t, but the faster you’re out of sight and farther out of reach, the better.”
         “I assume the Marshals arrived as expected, and found I’d made a hasty departure?” One line had told Emily the warning of her impending arrest was real, neither joke nor setup. Long live the flugelhorn! Her ex-husband, a ridiculous line from their courtship days he knew she’d recognize. Julen had connections. He hadn’t been faithful to her, but he’d been loyal when it counted most.
         “Your disappearance has been noted,” Pink said. “You’ve been declared you a fugitive.”
         “Charged with witchcraft?” Emily waved a hand. “Sorry. Wonder if that will be a joke much longer.”
         Constable Jackson opened a small notepad. “Charges include membership in an outlawed political party, subverting the government, corruption of public morals, blasphemy, libel of the Grand Prophet, aiding and abetting deviancy . . . quite a list . . . terrorism upgrades attached to several. No witchcraft. Also, divulging state secrets.”
         Emily laughed. “State secrets.” The Grand Prophet had been furious to find the existence of his mistresses exposed in the pages of The Guardian. And to learn a Der Spiegel article had detailed the reason one of those mistresses had made a sudden trip to Corsica. The same reason meant prison for most women. Emily knew the regime believed her to be the source of those stories. They were right about one.
         “They assume you will attempt to leave the country,” Jackson said. “A Red Notice has been issued through INTERPOL in case you might pass through an airport in a nation willing to detain you for extradition.”
         “Not a shock,” Emily said. “A number of authoritarian regimes abuse Red Notices in hopes a political opponent might be detained and returned for a show trial. Or a staged suicide.”
         “INTERPOL may quash the notice,” Pink said, “but you’ll want to exercise caution in future travel. Avoid even the airspace of countries willing to honor a notice on you.”
         “Well, there go my vacation plans in Russia and its allies. At least if I’m detained in a democratic nation I can find a lawyer, and have the notice invalidated. So, where am I going from here? I’d like to get in touch with my daughter.”
         “First, we need to get you farther away from the border,” Pink said. “Out of sight until you can be moved out of the country to another that will provide exile. Those making your arrangements will do their best to reunite you with your daughter.”
         “As long as I can speak with Hannah, let her know what’s happening. I left my phone and laptop behind to avoid any risk of being tracked.”
         “I’ll inquire about getting word to your daughter. It’s best you not attempt communication yourself. Your whereabouts might be exposed if intercepted. She is your only immediate family? No others left behind who may be at risk?”
         “My ex-husband, if they discover he warned me. But I’m certain he can take care of himself. There’s . . .” Emily looked to the surrounding woods, thinking of her son. He might have been among those sent to arrest her. Cult now transcended family, transcended everything. “There’s no one else. Not anymore.”
         Pink nodded, seeming to understand. “I’m sorry.”
         “The senator and I had best be on our way, Staff Sergeant,” Jackson said.
         “Of course,” Emily said. “Former Senator Urbina, at your disposal, Constable. Thank you, Staff Sergeant Pink. And please thank our driver—Michael, you said? Offer him my apologies and condolences, meaningless as they may be. Tell him to please be careful.”
         “I will,” Pink said. “Good luck to you . . . Senator.”
         “Good luck to all of us.”

***

         “Do you have any idea how old you might be?” the corporal asked.
         “I turned twenty this winter.”
         The corporal, only twenty-three himself, had guessed the woman was older. Her eyes said she was older. It was unusual for a slave to know her age, more so her birthdate.
         New Orleans had been in Union hands for a month. Word had spread the new commander of Camp Parapet welcomed runaway slaves. “There are so many,” the corporal had said on his first day assigned to interview those seeking refuge.
         “Perhaps four million are enslaved across the south,” the commander had told him. “Most, as of yet, have no way out. I hope we are up to this Herculean task.”
         The young woman with a shy little girl in tow had left their room at dawn. It had taken more than two hours to reach the main fort situated within the jagged line of wood, brick, and earthen fortifications between the Mississippi River and the Lake Pontchartrain swamps. Another two hours in a slow-moving line. She wore an older day dress and capelet, both showing wear, yet nicer than the threadbare, oft-mended clothing of many in line.
         The corporal smiled at the little girl clinging to the woman’s skirt and hand.
         “Hannah is almost three,” the woman said. “That’s my mother’s name. Hannah.”
         “And your name is Julia?” the corporal asked. “Do you have a surname?”
         “Jackson.” The woman hesitated. “And it’s Emily. Emily Jackson. Julia is the name he give me . . . after he bought me.” Her eyes darted to her lap. “His wife’s name is Emily. Reckon he didn’t want two of us.”
         “Where are you living now?”
         “I got a room at Miss Eliza’s place. Eliza Reynolds. She runs a house on Girod Street.”
         “A rooming house?”
         “No, sir, it’s . . . it’s a brothel—but she don’t make me, I mean, I’m not one of her girls. She lets me and Hannah have a room in the attic. Reckon she feels sorry for us.”
         The corporal frowned. “Brothels can attract trouble.”
         “Miss Eliza don’t let customers up to the attic. Nobody knows me and Hannah are there.”
         “Do you know where were you born?”
         “Clinton County, Illinois.”
         The corporal’s head jerked up. “You were born in a free state?”
         “My mother and father are free.”
         “Then . . . how did you become a slave in New Orleans—or anywhere?”
         “Slave hunters stole me when I was fourteen. Me and another lady. And they took another woman and a little boy down near the Ohio River. There was a man with them, but he tried to fight back, and the slavers shot him.”
         The corporal sat back in his chair. “You were never legally a slave.” He had witnessed slave hunters tracking their runaway quarry even as far north as his home state of Connecticut. The Fugitive Slave Act had provided wide latitude to claim someone as a runaway. Wide enough to kidnap the free, and sell them into slavery. “Two other women and a young boy? All free as well? You’ve no idea where they might have been sold?”
         “Slave hunters sold us to a trader below the Ohio,” Emily said. “He took us on to a market in Nashville. I reckon the others were sold there. Slave trader sent me on downriver to a market in New Orleans.”
         “The others might be anywhere in Tennessee?”
         “Or farther south. Might have been sold more than once by now.” Emily looked away. “I’m afraid Momma and Daddy might think I run away.”
         “Another woman taken in the same county? There’s a good chance they know what happened. They will be quite happy to learn you’re alive.”
         “Hope they’ll let me come back . . . with Hannah.”
         “I imagine they’ve thought of little else but finding you.”
         Emily spoke so quietly the corporal had to lean forward. “The slave trader what took me on to New Orleans, he sold me as a . . . a fancy maid . . . that’s what they call us . . .”
         The corporal’s face flushed. Not one of Eliza Reynolds’s girls, but forced into a similar life by a man who’d purchased a fourteen-year-old girl as a concubine. A self-declared southern gentleman who would consider the little girl he’d fathered by force to be his slave as well.
         “I trust your parents will care only that their daughter is safe. And has been freed.”
         “Don’t even know if Momma and Daddy are still alive.”
         The corporal fidgeted, uncertain what to say to this woman, this girl forced overnight to leave childhood behind.
         Emily stroked her daughter’s hair. Her voice turned to the hard edge of someone much older. “What do I do now? I don’t know where to go, how to find my way home. I don’t wanna work for Miss Eliza, not as one of her girls. Unless there’s no other way to take care of Hannah.”
         “Until we open the Mississippi all the way north, there’s no safe passage back to your home. But we can find a job for you here, with the Army, in the kitchen or the laundry. You were free as a girl . . . by any chance, can you read and write?”
         Emily nodded. “I had some schooling before, when I was free.”
         “Maybe they can use you in the hospital.” The corporal made a note on the paper in front of him. “Is there anyone who can look after your daughter when you’re working?”
         “The girls all like Hannah. Especially Abigail. She had a little boy, but the yellow jack took him.”
         “Write to your parents. I’ll make sure your letter is sent. Let them know you’re alive.”
         Emily squeezed the little girl’s hand and smiled at her. The smile was gone when she looked up again. Her eyes turned younger when wet. “Reckon I don’t always feel too alive.”
         The corporal handed her a sheet of paper. “This tells the head nurse you can read, and are a good candidate to work in . . .” The corporal smiled. “I’m sorry. I’m used to explaining. Most I meet here were never allowed to learn to read. Just take this over to the hospital. You’ll see it directly across the compound. I’m sure they can find a place for you.”
         Emily gazed at the little girl beside her. “Will Hannah be free now?”
         “Both of you are free now.”
         The corporal watched as Emily took Hannah by the hand, and led her from the room. He regarded the long line of others fleeing bondage, everything they owned carried in small bundles. “There are so many,” he muttered.

***

         Dawn had risen while she was somewhere over the Atlantic. Emily Urbina spent most of the nine hour trip worrying about her daughter. Had anyone gotten word to her? Emily trusted it wouldn’t be too difficult to find her. How many women named Hannah Urbina could there be in the country. She broke into tears when she saw Hannah waiting for her in the customs office.
         “The ferry ride is almost four hours?” Emily asked as they waited for a bus to take them to the port.
         Hannah smiled. “It’s a beautiful trip. This will be the best one yet. I’ve been so worried. Afraid they’d take you from me.”
         “They tried. And to think I have your father to thank. Though I don’t dare do so, or they’ll know he warned me.”
         “But you’re free now?”
         “Both of us are free now. But so many have no way out.”
         “Can we help them? Somehow?”
         “A Herculean task, I fear. And a colossal risk. But we’ll damn sure try.”

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JOHN MUMMERT spent thirty years in the water quality field before turning to writing. His stories are published or forthcoming in drip, wildscape literary journal, Up North Lit, Ivo Review, TrashLight, Sangam Literary Magazine, and Wild: Uncivilized Tales From Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. He lives in western Minnesota.

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