The kid frowned. “Historical society? Probably, knowing this burg. What kind of history you interested in?”
“Black,” Louis said. “Especially slave history, the Underground Railroad.”
The kid rubbed his whiskers. “I saw a sign over on Main the other day in a store window. Something about African-American Cultural Society or something.”
“That might do.” Louis rose, leaving a twenty on the counter. “Thanks. Keep the change.”
“Hey, thanks, man, I can use it.” He pocketed the bill. “Can I ask what you’re looking for?”
For some strange reason, Mel Landeta’s line popped into Louis’s head:
“A woman,” Louis said.
The sign in the storefront on Main was hand-lettered: ANN ARBOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER. An old neon martini glass above the door told of the place’s previous life as a cocktail lounge.
Inside, the fifties-style blond-wood bar was still in place, cardboard boxes covering it and filling the liquor shelves behind. Turquoise vinyl booths lined one wall, with tables and chairs stacked in the back. The lights were off, giving the place an alleylike feel.
“Hello! Anyone here?”
He heard the
“Can I help you?” she asked, setting the box down on the bar.
Louis came forward. “I’m looking for some information on the Underground Railroad.”
“We’re not officially open yet,” the woman said. She reached over the bar and hit a light switch. The fluorescents spit and hummed into life. “As you can see.”
In the harsh light, the woman’s odd beauty registered. She had smooth, dark skin and a long, solemn face that made Louis recall a Modigliani portrait he had seen in a book once. The book had sat on his foster mother Frances’s coffee table, a big shiny thing that went untouched except for all those times as a kid when he furtively thumbed through it looking for naked women. The Modigliani face had stuck in his mind, because it looked just like an African mask he had seen in one of Phillip’s
“The grants just came through last month,” the woman said. “All we’re doing now is bringing in the stuff from storage. We don’t even have our computers yet.” The woman saw his disappointment and offered a smile. “Maybe if you told me exactly what it is you’re looking for?”
“I wish I knew,” Louis said, shaking his head. “I’m trying to find out if a farm near here could have been a station on the Railroad.”
“Well, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti were right on the routes.” She hesitated, then moved away, her long fingers tracing the writing on the boxes. She stopped, dug inside one box, pulled out a paper, and unfolded it on the bar in front of Louis.
It was a map of southern Michigan, with colored lines cutting up from Ohio and Indiana, across lower Michigan toward Detroit and over to Canada.
“There were seven main routes on the Underground Railroad, and three of them ran right through here,” she said. “Where is the farm?”
“South of Hell,” Louis said.
The woman pointed to a red line that ran up along Lake Michigan, veered east to Lansing, then south. “This is the old Grand River Trail,” she said. “A slave using this route probably would have gone right through there.”
Louis couldn’t take his eyes off the red line.
“Do you know much about the Underground Railroad?”
Her soft voice drew his eyes up to hers. She wasn’t patronizing him, but he had the sense that she had asked this question of many others before. She had the evangelistic energy that all good teachers had.
“I know it wasn’t a real railroad.”
She smiled.
“How did a place become a station?” he asked.
“There were always people — Quakers, abolitionists, and just regular folks — who hid runaways. We think there were as many as three thousand people involved when the system was running at its strongest.”
“Where did people hide?” Louis asked.
“Churches, barns, attics, cellars, anywhere they could,” she said. “The stations were about twenty miles apart, and there were secret ways to alert someone that it was a safe place, like a lighted candle in the window. Some say the patterns of quilts were codes, but no one has proven that.”
“Michigan was a free state,” Louis said. “I always thought once someone got this far, he was safe.”
She shook her head. “They could still be captured and sent back. Especially after 1850.”
“Why then?”
“Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. There were so many escapes that plantation owners in the South pressured the government to step in. The act gave slave owners the right to come up here and hunt down their ‘property.’ There were posses of men called slave catchers who were paid bounties to capture runaways and take them back to the South.”
Louis was thinking now of Amy’s tortured account of Isabel’s death. “What happened if someone got caught helping a runaway?”
“They could be fined and imprisoned,” she said. “At the least, they were hassled by the law or others in the community. At the worst, they were killed.”
Again, the images from Amy’s dream came to Louis. Men on horses with torches and dogs. A woman hanged from a hook and buried alive, as a white man in eyeglasses — Amos Brandt? — stood by and watched.
“Is there any way to find names?” Louis asked.
The woman just stared at him.
“I mean, of runaways or people who might have helped them?”
She gestured toward the boxes. “Oh, Lord, we have thousands of records here, journals, photographs, ledgers, property records. People have heard about us and keep bringing things in.” Her hand dropped. “But we are years away from getting it all organized.”
“So, you would have no way of telling me if a man named Amos Brandt had a station somewhere on his farm?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Or the name Isabel? She was a black woman who-”
The slow shake of her head cut him off. “Except for me, everyone is a volunteer here,” she said. Again, she sensed Louis’s disappointment, and her eyes softened. “But you’re more than welcome to look yourself.”
Louis let out a long breath, his eyes dropping to the map spread on the bar. When he glanced up, there was a mild look of pity on her face.
“Is this woman part of your family?” she asked.
“No,” Louis said. He held out his hand. “Thank you for your time.”
She shook his hand. “Can I give you my card? If you find any proof that your farm was a station, we’d really like to hear about it so we can document it.”
Louis took the card. Daphne Mayer, Ph.D. He was about to give it back, telling her he wasn’t going to be in Ann Arbor much longer, but then he paused. He dug in his jacket, found his wallet, and pulled out Eric Channing’s business card. He spotted a pencil on the counter and used it to scribble his name on the back of the card.
He handed it to the woman. “On the small chance you do find something about the Brandt farm, could you call me?”
She looked up at him with mild surprise on her face. “I can do that, Sergeant Channing.”
He pointed to the card and smiled. “I’m on the back. Louis Kincaid. And I’ll be leaving town soon. But the sergeant will know where to find me.”
She pocketed the card and give him a smile of her own. “I hope you find her,” she said.
“Thanks.”
Louis eyed the mountain of cardboard boxes. But as he said it, he knew that even if Isabel was buried in
