Running Out of Night (27 page)

The letters haunted me. I worried that if they were damaged or destroyed, a portion of history would be lost. For countless hours, I sat in my cousin’s old log cabin on the banks of the Catoctin Creek and copied the letters into my journal. I learned of abolitionist meetings, school days, hard times, births, deaths, and the changes that flowed toward an inevitable and
bloody civil war that split families apart as surely as lightning splits a tree.

I didn’t want to leave Virginia and the familiar murmuring of the Catoctin, but I had to return to California to finish college. A few years later, my son, Noah, and I journeyed back to visit my elderly cousin Margaret Macdonald. Late at night, while Noah slept, I sat in the hot and humid attic (like the hidden one in Auntie’s house) and copied more letters. Rain drummed on the tin roof, lightning flashed, and thunder boomed and shook the little cabin to its foundation. I wrote for hours, until my hand couldn’t hold a pen and my heart couldn’t hold another sorrowful word.

Many years later, when I began to research and write this book, the voices and memories of Virginia poured from me like a sweet mountain spring. They were the words spoken by the children in the schools where I substitute-taught, the clerks in the old-fashioned hardware store in Purcellville, the postmaster, and the elders at the Goose Creek Friends meeting. Because of my passion for dialect, I chose to write this book in the voice of the Virginia I knew and loved.

Each chapter of the book begins with a superstition or proverb commonly known by the people then—and in many places, even now. Some of the sayings came from my grandma Clarke, others from Cousin Margaret, still others from old writings and collections of folklore. These sayings are woven into the fabric of country life; without them, the story would be as plain as a bolt of bleached muslin.

Besides visiting Virginia several times, I read innumerable
books, newspaper stories from the mid-1800s, firsthand slave narratives, and Wanted posters. To read of someone described like a horse or cow—branded on cheek, scarred on back from whippings when trying to escape—broke my heart, but the most unimaginable pain came from reading about the division of families: children torn from their parents’ arms, husbands and wives split apart. How did people endure such tragedy? Yet for every cruel, heartless person, there was someone, somewhere, who cared enough to work toward change—and all it takes is one determined person to turn a breeze into a transformational tornado.

Because of the lack of written records and the necessary secrecy of the Underground Railroad, I’ll never know for sure whether my family played a part in it, although they did attend abolitionist meetings. Despite their religion and their pacifist beliefs, my great-grandfather Edwin Baker and my great-uncle Aaron Baker both enlisted in the Union Army and fought in the Civil War. I believe that they, like many Quakers who joined the cause, were fighting for their country and the abolition of slavery.

The Baker brothers served in the famed Pennsylvania Bucktails regiment, named for the buck’s tail worn like a badge on every hat. They engaged in many of the major battles of the war, including bloody Gettysburg. Just days before being mustered out of the army, Aaron was killed at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House and buried by his brother in a nearby field.

Some of the names in my story were taken from historical records of the times. Yardley Taylor, a nineteenth-century
mapmaker, nurseryman, and Quaker, was the president of the Loudoun Manumission and Emigration Society. He was known as the Chief of the Abolition Clan. So I chose him to be Asa’s father and Auntie’s brother.

William Still, the man who would shelter and move Brightwell and Zenobia north to Canada, was the fearless and relentless free Philadelphia black man who is often called the Father of the Underground Railroad. He directed a network of sympathizers, abolitionists, and safe houses and aided in the escapes of hundreds of fleeing slaves. He wrote detailed diaries of his work, which he kept hidden for the safety of the slaves and everyone involved. He wanted to make sure that the heroism and struggle of the slaves “be kept green in the memory of this and coming generations.”

Moses cat was named after heroic Harriet Tubman, a tiny escaped slave nicknamed Moses after the biblical prophet. Tubman bravely ventured back into Maryland many times to help her family and other enslaved people to freedom. She was an inspiration and a brilliant ray of hope to thousands.

Friend Hough and Friend Mount were two renowned cabinetmakers of nineteenth-century Waterford, Virginia. They carry out chairs and a rocker to fill the bed of the wagon above where Zenobia and Brightwell will hide.

The Catoctin Creek is a tributary of the mighty Potomac River. Waterford is the beautifully preserved Loudoun County village, where Zenobia, Lark, and Brightwell seek shelter. You can still visit Waterford and see the historic mills and the old
stone meetinghouse (now a private home) where Lark hid from Shag Honeybone.

To plot the journey of Zenobia and Lark, I used the contemporary work of historical mapmaker Eugene Scheel of Waterford. His maps trace landholdings, homes, mills, stores, roads, churches, cemeteries, slave auction houses, and more through the centuries. I believe that while studying Scheel’s map of the Potomac River and surrounding areas, I located the farm my family owned in the 1800s.

The herbs, insects, birds, gardening, crafts, and ethnobotany mentioned throughout the book are my lifelong passion. For many years, I owned an herb shop surrounded by bountiful heirloom gardens, where I taught classes and held festivals. I spun wool, collected plants for natural dyeing, wove fabric, and made baskets. At a local natural history museum, I taught thousands of children about Native American ethnobotany, the secret lives of birds, California sea otters, gray whales, and monarch butterflies. These passions all became second nature to me, and a big part of Lark’s life in Virginia.

Just as Hannah doll is quilted with fabrics of many textures and colors, so my story was written—with memories, history, nature, dreams, hope, superstitions, fear, and love—patch by patch, stitch by stitch, until it is, as Lark said, “all of a piece.”

Sharon Lovejoy
is the award-winning, bestselling author and illustrator of nonfiction books about nature and gardening for children and adults.
Running Out of Night
is her debut novel. It draws on her ancestral roots in Virginia and her lifelong interest in nature, herbs, ethnobotany, and early American arts and crafts.

Her other books include the children’s gardening classics
Sunflower Houses
and
Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots
, which have introduced hundreds of thousands of children to nature. She is the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in Children’s Literature for
The Little Green Island with a Little Red House
. Her writing has appeared in
Ranger Rick
magazine, in
The New Book of Knowledge
encyclopedia, and in educational testing materials in English and Spanish.

Sharon lives on California’s Central Coast and on a little green island in Maine. She is a frequent speaker at schools and for organizations across the country. Learn more about her at
sharonlovejoy.com
.