They had crossed the River Jordan yet the terrain was not much different. They still had to cross gullies and frozen creeks, and had to climb hills and walk on precarious slopes — all undulating in the same rhythm. They still had to walk through naked clusters of woods. It was in the middle of one of these that the Spirit led them to a small log cabin. A skinny mule was roped outside under a thatched shelter. They were welcomed by an old hermit, perhaps over eighty years old, who was so senile he was not aware that the Revolutionary War came to an end sixty years before. He had lived in the woods as a fugitive from himself that long — meeting people once or twice a year to replenish those supplies he could not produce himself and to barter his corn and beans for clothes or the replacement of a dead mule. In all these transactions he stayed away from the communion of other men and women.
The hermit was nevertheless very happy to have his own niggers at last. He felt that he was getting places now that God had given him his own slaves. The fact that he was in Ohio where there was no slavery did not seem to register in his mind. The boys played along to humor him and to get food and protection from the elements while Abednego gathered more strength and recovered fully. Then they would follow the North Star to its conclusion in Canaan — after stopping for a while at Berlin Crossroads to pay their respects to Nicodemus’s father and to give him news of the Abyssinian Queen.
The boys spent almost two weeks in the hermit’s benign slavery. He helped in nursing Abednego back to robust health by giving him large amounts of blackberry root tea for his diarrhea. He had enough supplies and for the first time after weeks on the road the boys were able to eat cooked meals — mostly grits and boiled beans. Now that Abednego was strong again he was secretly gnawed by the fact that it was his younger brother who had had to look after him when it should have been the other way round. He was determined to prove himself this time, and would be sure to take a leadership role on the road to Canaan.
They bought their freedom from the hermit with the slave trader’s musket — in reality they were merely rewarding him for his hospitality — and went on their way. The hermit was sad to see them go, but was at least relieved that his old eardrums would be saved from Nicodemus’s nightly flute trills.
The Spirit took charge of their lives once more, as indicated by the occasional presence of Massa Blue Fly, who was nowhere to be seen in the two weeks they had succor at the hermit’s cabin. On one occasion the Spirit placed on their path a dead deer covered in snow and nicely preserved, perhaps for months or weeks depending on how long the place had been frozen like that. The boys roasted the meat on an open fire on the spot, had a feast, and then took some of it with them as they trudged the breadth of Meigs County. They had become reckless for they did not only walk in the night but at daytime too. Sometimes the Spirit placed them on top of a hill where they sledded down on pine branches. All the while Nicodemus held very tightly to his sampler and Abednego to the deer meat wrapped in the deerskin. Hills dressed only in snow alternated with white forests devoid of foliage, short-lived valleys of driven snow that suddenly became steep slopes, glorious summits and then sliding down again to deep gorges with frozen creeks. On one particularly steep hill they rolled down the slope, their sleds breaking to pieces and tumbling after them, until they got to a wooded valley. They nevertheless did not let go of their bundles.
They took a rest in the woods and Nicodemus played his flute, which he found relaxing and calming. They were startled by the approach of a huge black man in a double-breasted black frock coat, brownish canvas pants and black calf boots. He wore a woolen hat that protected his ears from the cold and his hands were in thick mittens. The boys were wide-eyed because they had never seen such a well-heeled black person before. Perhaps even snow-covered rolling hills yielded mirages.
Massa Blue Fly buzzed around with much ceremony, mocking the man’s attempts at swatting it off, and then flew away never to be seen again.
“What have we here?” the gigantic man asked, looking down at the boys.
He sized them up, and immediately recognized them as fugitives because of their dirty and tattered clothes. “Who said this ain’t no season for them runaways?”
They were thinking of dashing away when he grabbed them by the scruff of their necks and said: “Welcome to the Underground Railroad. Calm down. And next time remember it ain’t the smartest thing to play music if you trying to hide.”
They relaxed a bit when they saw that he meant them no harm.
His name was Birdman, he said, and he was an Underground Railroad conductor. He was always scouting around the woods for runaways, and then transporting them in his wagon to Underground Railroad stations in Athens. He would do the same for them and would place them in a safe house where they would get a thorough bath and fresh clothing. He discouraged them from any notion of trying to reach Berlin Crossroads in Mercer County, for that was far west on the Indiana border. The whole state was crawling with bounty hunters and slave catchers. They would surely be caught and sent back to Virginia for a reward before they got anywhere near Mercer County.
In Birdman the boys saw for the first time an African who was owned by nobody. They knew there were such Africans. They had heard that some of the slave stealers who covertly visited Fairfield Farms on occasion were free blacks, but they had never seen one with their own eyes.
They were surprised to hear that Birdman already knew about the escapees from Fairfield Farms and that Mr. David Fairfield was offering a substantial reward of five hundred dollars — instead of the normal two hundred — especially for his prime stud, Nicodemus. Birdman told them that he knew all this from the Underground Railroad grapevine, which was very effective indeed. Abednego felt insulted and slighted that The Owner did not consider him worthy of any such big reward on his head, even though he was supposed to have sired him. Oh, yes, people gossiped about his pedigree at Fairfield Farms until it reached his ears!
It dawned on the boys as Birdman spoke that the Underground Railroad was neither a railroad nor was it under the ground. The lines that he talked about were trails, the conductors were people like him, and the stations were safe houses. They were passengers, although they did not understand how they could be called that since they had actually looked for their freedom themselves up to that point and had not been ferried around like passengers.
Birdman was impressed that the boys had made it all the way on their own without any assistance from the Underground Railroad network. “Well, from now on you gonna be my passengers,” he said. “I am gonna look after you and hand you over to other conductors until you get to Canada.”
When he realized the boys were reluctant to let go of their Berlin Crossroads dream, he stressed once more: “Better you forget about Berlin Crossroads for now. No safe place for fugitives. Besides, it ain’t on your way to Canada.”
The boys were impressed that Birdman seemed to be so fearless that he operated alone on such dangerous missions. Many conductors, he told them, went around guarded by armed men. But he preferred to work on his own because he attracted less attention that way. Also he was able to escape easily from slave hunters and from the law, using wiles instead of force, unless it was absolutely necessary to use force.