The other patterns on Nicodemus’s sampler transmitted messages to escapees along similar lines: the North Star advising them always to follow the North Star for that was the correct direction to Canaan, which existed on official maps as Canada; the Monkey Wrench warning them of the necessity of thorough preparation and of acquiring appropriate tools and provisions for an escape; the Flying Geese and Crossroads once more identifying the directions to be taken; and the Log Cabin denoting Underground Railroad stations. There were many other patterns that they would learn all in good time, most of which she herself had yet to learn from the matriarchs.
What registered in the boys’ minds throughout all these lessons was that rather than identify a specific direction for escape as her map on Abednego’s crazy quilt attempted to do, the designs on Nicodemus’s sampler were general warnings and advice. Although they did not give specific instructions on what to do at a specific time and point, they inspired the boys to aspire to escape. But most of all, as the Abyssinian Queen indicated through her performances, they celebrated acts of escape, hence encouraging others to do the same. She taught the boys the code every night, until they mastered it. It did not matter at all if it would ever serve any practical purpose in their escape. It was enough that it served them spiritually and nourished their hopes of freedom.
The closer Abednego got to the age when he would have to be sold, the more frantic the Abyssinian Queen became. Her stories of escape were filled with more urgency. Songs of escape permeated the very air that the occupants of Fairfield Farms breathed. The mother taught the boys to have sharp ears for every sound spoken of escape. The warbling of the birds in the morning. The croaking of the frogs in the evening. The chirping of the crickets. The hymns that the worshippers sang on Sunday. All these spoke the language of flight.
The boys learned that the biblical chariots that were coming to carry them home referred to the wagons with secret compartments that would take them to freedom. In the fields as men and women toiled they delivered the message about the presence of the Underground Railroad people in the vicinity by singing “Steal Away” or “Let My People Go,” passing the songs from person to person and from group to group, until the excitement permeated Fairfield Farms, and those who were ready indeed stole away. Why, even the rhythms of the blacksmiths talked. The hammer that repeatedly hit the anvil encoded messages of successful escapes or of the presence of abolitionists — both whites and free blacks — who were hiding in the gullies, biding their time, waiting to steal slaves away from their masters across the Ohio River.
The boys’ resolve to escape was strengthened by the flogging they received in the same week for different transgressions. Abednego was caught drumming. A month before, The Owner had decreed that drums and all percussive instruments were prohibited at Fairfield Farms. He had been told by his spies that wily slaves used drums to send messages and to broadcast news of escapes. There were murmurs of disgruntlement in the community, for drums were essential in church services. Abednego particularly found it difficult to give up his pastime. Although his dream of one day playing the drums in church was now smashed, he woke up some nights when he believed the whole plantation was asleep and practiced on his drum, beating it softly under the sycamore tree outside the cabin. He was caught by an insomniac overseer who, after failing to extract a bribe from the Abyssinian Queen in exchange for his silence, reported the boy to The Owner. Abednego was seriously flogged.
Nicodemus, on the other hand, was punished for learning to read and write, which was a very serious crime for a slave. It turned out that when one of The Owner’s daughters came to the storytelling sessions at the slave quarters she struck up a close friendship with Nicodemus. One thing led to another and they ended up teaching each other what they knew best: she teaching him how to read and write, he teaching her how to fashion a reed flute, how to tongue and slur it to produce full-bodied notes, and also how to play the commies — the unglazed earthenware marbles that the white kids bought from the plantation store. She was so excited that she blurted out these activities to everyone at the big house, including her mother. Nicodemus received the whipping of his life.
The Owner was becoming increasingly restless, and there were good reasons for that. Lately untoward things were happening at the plantation. A trusted white servant escaped with her African lover, crossing the Ohio River at Gallipolis and melting into the Underground Railroad, possibly to Canada. The Owner felt that he was losing his grip because it was the second time there had been such a scandal on his plantation — although on the first occasion the escape was foiled and the woman — who had disguised herself as a man to facilitate the escape — was now languishing in the county jail charged with the theft of Mr. Fairfield’s property. The property, of course, was the man with whom she was escaping with a view to settling in Ohio where they could live as husband and wife since they had heard that there was no slavery in that state. The man was severely flogged and then chained outside like a dog for weeks on end. The Owner hoped this would serve as an example to all those who planned to take such daring but foolhardy action. But now here again he was faced with a similar situation, and to add to his frustration the escape had been carried out successfully. Slave chasers with their vicious dogs and trusty steeds had returned empty-handed.
Random escapes had happened at Fairfield Farms before, but this caused a buzz of excitement in the slave community because it involved a white woman. Whites rarely escaped from the plantation because they had better privileges than black slaves.
The Owner had devised various ways of keeping white women as slaves. Even though white slavery was thought to have come to an end soon after the Revolutionary War, at Fairfield Farms the practice continued right into the 1840s because white women were essential for the breeding of mulatto children. Gone were the days when The Owner could obtain mulatto children from mating white men with black women. With the large-scale breeding that was happening at the plantation, there were just not enough white men to service the black women. White men were free to seek their fortunes elsewhere. And they did. They worked their way up and bought their own farms and their own slaves. Or sold their labor in the cities. Mating white women with black studs was the answer. In an age where women were considered inferior to men in any case, and wives were the property of their husbands, it was easier and more cost-effective to hold white women in bondage than to employ white studs.
The Owner got away with keeping white slaves by marrying white women in reduced circumstances to blacks, which enabled him to hold the women legally as slaves. If any curious official asked questions, especially those self-righteous church people who cringed at the very notion of white slavery and condemned it as unchristian, The Owner took refuge in the one-drop rule, claiming that the women were rightly “colored” concocting some distant non-white ancestry for the wenches. Often he randomly designated some of the women octoroons or quintroons, using manufactured evidence. Their mulatto children were therefore born into slavery.