The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

Molly had reached for her hand when school ended. A new thing between them.

She hadn’t been chosen by one of the little one...

Over the smoky greenwood coals, long sticks splayed out the two hogs. Jimmy was the pit master. His father had grown up in Jamaica and had

passed down the fire secrets of the Maroons. Jimmy poked the roasting meat with his fingers and nudged the coals, prowling around the fire as if sizing up a grappling partner.

late from North Carolina and the massacres, and preferred his...

One of his apprentices shook a jug of vinegar and pepper. He motioned to a little girl at the edge of the fire and guided her hands to mop the insides of the hog with the mixture.

The drippings popped on the coals in the trenches.

It would be a fi...

Sybil was twelve years her senior.

Cora knew that it was

merely her time away from the plantation working on the woman in the best way: Her new life required a different sort of strength...

the manner of those who’d been made to bend and w...

A cheer went up over by the barbecue pit, as it did each time they turned the hogs.

The silent theater of Sybil and Molly’s love moved her always. The way the child asked for assistance without speaking and the mother pointed, nodded, and pantomimed her child out of a fix. Cora wasn’t accustomed to a quiet cabin—on

Sybil had absconded with Molly when her daughter was only two, toting her child all the way.

Sybil faced a public sale. She left that night—the full moon gave its blessing and guidance through the forest.

Three miles over the Pennsylvania border they risked a visit to the cottage of a colored farmer.

After a spell in Worcester working for a milliner, Sybil and Molly made their way to Indiana. Word had spread of the farm. So many fugitives had passed through Valentine—there

On Saturday evenings the farm got together for a common meal and diversions.

Saturday night, when those with a taste for spirits partook

The hogs were the first order of business, chopped on the long pine

table and covered in dipney sauce. Smoky collards, turnips, sweet potato pie,

The residents were a reserved bunch, save for when Jimmy’s barbecue came out—prim ladies used their elbows. The pit master lowered his head at every compliment, alread...

Cora tugged off a crispy ear, Molly’s favorite, and presen...

One hundred souls was a sturdy number to stop at—a fantastic figure by any measure—and

fifty or so children, most were under the age of five. “Liberty make a body fertile,” Georgina said. That, and the knowledge they will not be sold, Cora added.

She had given herself too easily to the false promises of South Carolina. Now a bitter part of her refused the treasures of the Valentine farm, even as every day some blessing part came into bloom.

Royal took her to the ghost tunnel after a month on the farm. Cora started working her second day, thoughts in a knot over Valentine’s motto: “Stay, and contribute.” A request, and a cure.

dilemma of finding your purpose once you’ve slipped the yoke of slavery.

The ghost tunnel had never been used, Royal said, as far as anyone knew. No one knew when it was dug, or who had lived above.

An old station master offered that it had been the home of a major general in the Revolutionary War, a man who had witnessed much bloodshed and had withdrawn from the young nation after helping to bring it into existence.

Red kept watch with his rifle as Royal and Justin chained first Boseman and then Ridgeway to the wagon. The slave catcher did

not speak, sneering at Cora with his bloody mouth the while.

Royal was the first freeborn man Cora had ever met.

“I oil the pistons,” he liked to say. Royal placed the coded messages in the classifieds that informed runaways and conductors of departures.

“A free black walks different than a slave,” he said. “White people recognize it immediately, even if they don’t know it.

Tennessee lay outside Royal’s posting, but the railroad’s local representative had been out of

contact since the wildfire. To cancel the train would be disastrous. With no one else available, Royal’s superiors reluctantly sent the two colored agents deep into the Tennessee badlands.

The train pulled into the Tennessee station. It was the most splendid locomotive

After the rickety boxcar and then the cargo platform that had conveyed her to North Carolina, to step

into a proper passenger car—well-appointed and comfortable like the ones she’d read about in her almanacs—was

Lumbly’s words returned to her: If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start.

She could continue on to a connection in Indiana, or stay on the Valentine farm.

Land was cheap in Indiana. There were white people there, too, but not so close. Valentine learned the temperament of Indian corn. Three lucky seasons in a row.

By that autumn, his farm was the latest office of the underground railroad, busy with fugitives and conductors. Some runaways lingered; if they contributed, they could stay as long as they liked.

patch, a former plantation bricklayer built a forge for a former plantation blacksmith. The forge spat out nails at a remarkable rate. The men crosscut trees and erected cabins.

When the Valentines arrived, that neck of Indiana was unpopulated. As the towns erupted into being, quickened by the relentless American thirst, the black farm was there as a natural feature of the landscape, a mountain or a creek.

“It’s a place of healing,” Royal told Cora on the train

north. “Where you can take stock and make preparations for the next leg of the journey.”

Once Valentine lay before her in its seductive plenty, there was no question of Cora leaving. She contributed to the life of the farm. This was labor she recognized,