Carole (20 page)

Actually, I’ve realized that one possibility I haven’t spent much time considering yet is becoming an equine vet, like Judy Barker. After everything we’ve all learned about allergies lately (human and equine), I think I’m more impressed than ever with everything Judy has to know to be so good at her job.

Hmmm. My friends are always teasing me about being a walking horse encyclopedia. Maybe that’s a sign that I should follow in Judy’s bootprints.…

Hi! I hope you’re having a great holiday. Did you get any presents that have to do with horses? (Ha ha!) I did. I got a new turnout sheet for Duffy, a nice pair of all-weather riding gloves, and a bunch of horse books. One of the books is a guide to horse behavior, one’s about combined training, and the other is a mystery about show jumping. (I think my mom gave me that last one because she wants to read it herself!)

Anyway, I hope you’re doing well. Maybe we’ll get to see each other during our school breaks. Say hi to Starlight for me, and your human friends, too.

It’s funny how things happen sometimes. Whenever Christmas approaches I always start feeling kind of bittersweet, even though it’s still my favorite holiday. This year was no different. I was looking forward to a nice, quiet holiday with Dad and a school break full of riding and more riding. Then, right before vacation, my teacher assigned a family tree project, saying we should try to talk to our relatives over the break and study our families through oral history, which means getting relatives to talk.

Well, that sounded pretty interesting, and it didn’t take me long to decide I wanted to concentrate on Mom’s side of the family. I really don’t know that much about them, and I thought it would be really interesting to find out. I was pretty excited about it when I told Dad, but at first he didn’t seem interested in the project at all. I soon found out why. He was just hiding a surprise for me: We’re going to Minnesota to stay with my relatives over the break! It’s all arranged. We leave right after Christmas and we’re staying for almost a week.

I can’t wait. I already know I have two aunts on Mom’s side. One is Aunt Elaine, who lives in North Carolina. The other is Mom’s younger sister, Jessie, who lives in Minnesota with her brother, my uncle John, Uncle John’s wife (Aunt Lily), my great-grandmother, Grand Alice, and my cousin Louise, who’s just a couple of years younger than me. Actually, my grandparents also live on the farm part of the year, but they’re down in Arizona for the winter.

I can’t believe Dad arranged this trip for me. It’s the greatest Christmas present ever! (Well, except for Starlight, of course.) I can’t wait to see my relatives again after all this time and ask them about our ancestors for my project. At the same time, I have to admit I’m kind of sad to miss a whole school holiday of riding and hanging out with my friends at Pine Hollow. I’m going to miss the latest Saddle Club project, which is planning a birthday party for Prancer and Topside and the other Thoroughbreds at Pine Hollow. It was Lisa who thought of that. She remembered that every registered Thoroughbred officially turns one year older on January first.

But I’m still glad we’re going. I’m really excited about getting to see Mom’s relatives again, especially after reading parts of my old diary recently. I want to know more about her life, especially the parts before I was born. Who knows? Maybe learning more about Mom will tell me more about myself, too. And maybe that will help me figure out what I’m meant to do with my life.

Because that e-mail I got from Cam, where he talked about that combined training book he got, just reminded me how much time I’ve wasted already trying to make up my mind. I was planning to take care of this question way back in June. Here it is, December already, and I’m no closer to an answer!

So maybe this trip really is just the push I need. As soon as my family tree project is finished, no more excuses. I’m going to sit down and figure out which career is right for me.

Well, here I am in Nyberg, Minnesota! It seemed to take forever to get here—we had to take two planes to get to northeastern Minnesota, and then Uncle John and Louise, who picked us up at the airport, told us it was another two hours’ drive in their four-wheel-drive vehicle. Plus it was so cold outside that I started to wish I’d packed my electric blanket. Actually, I kind of wished I was
wearing
it! The thermometer at the airport said it was negative five degrees. Yes, that’s right—
negative
five! But when we finally arrived at the farm, which is just outside the tiny town of Nyberg, my relatives
gave Dad and me a really warm welcome that made up for the cold weather. Well, most of them did, anyway.

I want to write down a few things that may be useful for my project. First, something kind of weird happened when we were chatting on the way here from the airport. I asked Uncle John to tell me about the family.

“Well,” he said, giving me his wide, friendly smile in the rearview mirror. “You’ve met me, and now Louise. Your aunt Lily, my devoted wife, is more of the same. You’ll like her. And your aunt Jessie is the baby sister—she’s thirty-four.”

“She’s the greatest!” Louise interrupted. “She takes photographs and sells them to magazines all over the country. She’s very talented, you know.”

I was a little surprised at her enthusiasm. Louise had been kind of quiet before then—almost unfriendly, I couldn’t help thinking, although maybe that’s just because Uncle John is so friendly and talkative.

“I remember hearing Mom talk about Aunt Jessie,” I said. “Didn’t she used to live in New York?”

There was a long pause.

“Well—” Uncle John began at last.

But Louise jumped in. “Don’t talk to Aunt Jessie about New York,” she told me fiercely. “Carole, don’t
ever
talk to Aunt Jessie about New York.”

I was a little confused by that. I didn’t say anything, though, and Uncle John started talking about Grand Alice and how she would be able to tell me a lot about the family.

He was right about that.… But I’ll get to that in a minute.

When we arrived at the farm, everyone was there to greet us, including the family dog, a big, hairy, friendly mutt named Ginger. A little later we ate dinner, then Louise showed me around the farm, which is really more of a compound. There are several different buildings with living quarters for the whole family, most of them connected by covered walkways because it’s so cold and snowy a lot of the time. My favorite building, of course, was the barn. There are four horses living there. Jiminy Cricket, a registered Morgan, is Louise’s horse. Aunt Jessie has a beautiful Arabian mare named Kismet. And there’s also a couple of big workhorses named Sugar and Spice.

“I know a horse named Spice,” I told Louise, remembering the mare that had come to Pine Hollow to be bred with Max’s stallion, Geronimo. “She’s a Thoroughbred.”

Louise laughed. “This Spice is no Thoroughbred. He and Sugar are plain old mixed-breed part-draft workhorses.” She patted Spice on his shaggy back, which looked as thick and rough as a polar bear’s. “We actually still use them for chores, especially in the wintertime. They start a lot more reliably than the tractor.”

When Louise and I got back to the main house, we found that Louise’s friend Christina Johnson, a neighbor from down the road, had stopped in to visit on her snowmobile. I liked her right away. She has a really open, welcoming way about her and a friendly smile. (Unlike my cousin. I know that’s not very nice, but I can’t help it. For some reason, Louise seems to be on her guard with me, even though we’re related and everything.)

Anyway, pretty soon after that we all gathered in the living room to talk and toast marshmallows. That’s when Grand Alice told a story about one of our ancestors. I’m writing it down because that’s what I’m supposed to do for my project, even though I’m not sure it’s something I want anyone outside our family to know about. It makes me feel weird to think about what Grand Alice told me about Jackson Foley—but never mind. I’m going to try to write it down just the way she told it.

My late husband’s great-grandfather was born into slavery on a cotton plantation in the middle of Georgia. No one knows quite where it was—ol’ Jackson never told what his master’s name had been, and when he got away from there he didn’t bother to read the road signs on his way out. So we don’t know who owned him—owned, Carole, think on that—or where it was he was born. Master had given him the name Jackson Washington
.

He had a wife. He had three little babies, born one after another, scarcely a year apart. Then one day he had a chance to escape. The Underground Railroad. A train, so to speak, had come for him
.

I don’t blame him for leaving. I don’t blame him one bit. Think what it meant: freedom! The work he did would be his own; the money he earned, his own to spend. He could go where he pleased. He could name his own children, instead of having Master do it for him. And those children, growing up, could not be sold away from him. Freedom is a mighty and precious thing, but I don’t think any of us, here in this room, can understand what it must have meant to a person who was born a slave. So I say, I don’t blame ol’ Jackson for leaving
.

His babies were too young to go—too young to keep quiet during all those dark and dangerous nights of travel. His wife, they say, would not leave her children. But Jackson, he had to go. He promised her that he would come back for them, just as soon as he earned the money to buy their freedom
.

Well, word came back to them by that same Underground Railroad. Jackson had made it safe to the North. They heard he was in Boston. They heard he had a job and was working hard. Then they heard nothing. A few years went by
.

The Civil War began. It became impossible to send messages between the North and the South. Finally the war ended, and the slaves were freed. Jackson Washington’s family didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to find him. They didn’t know if he was dead or alive. They thought he was dead, for sure. The children—two boys and a girl—were now eight, nine, and ten years old. With their mother, they set off north to find their daddy
.

They went to Boston and found that Jackson had been there but had moved on, so they moved on, too. There were freedmen’s societies—blacks helping blacks find their families. Many families had been split apart by slavery. With the societies’ help, that woman and those children tracked Jackson Washington from place to place. They looked for him for the better part of two years, working when they needed to, traveling when they could. They found him finally. I’m guessing that they wished they never did
.

Jackson was working for a logging company in a tiny town in Minnesota, on the Great Northern Railway line near the Mississippi River. Name of the town was Foley. Jackson, never much liking the name Washington, had changed his name to Foley, too
.

He’d given the name Foley to his wife. And to their four children
.

When Grand Alice said that, I wasn’t sure I’d understood her right. “But his wife and children were looking for him,” I said.

“His first wife and children,” Grand Alice corrected. “His second wife and children were with him in Foley.” She sighed. “I don’t blame him for leaving. I sure do blame him for never going back.”

Aunt Jessie spoke up then. Her dark eyes were angry. “You see, Carole, slave marriages weren’t legal. Legally, only Jackson Foley’s second wife was actually married to him.”

“But legally—What difference did
legally
make?” I was horrified. “While they waited and waited for him, and tried so hard to find him, he’d just given them up?”

“He’d just given up,” Grand Alice confirmed sadly. “Apparently he’d decided that he’d never be able to afford to buy his first family’s freedom, so he just started over. He didn’t know the war would come, of course. He didn’t know they’d all soon be free. But I say, he shouldn’t have given up.” She set her mouth in a firm line and folded and unfolded her hands.

“What happened next?” Christina asked.

“There was a ruckus that shook the streets of Foley. My husband’s grandfather was the eldest of the second batch of children—he was five years old—and he could remember the women shouting back and forth and the children crying. Finally, Jackson’s first wife and children renounced him and
his lack of courage. They went back to Boston. His second wife stayed on, but I don’t know if she forgave him. They’d had four children together already.” Grand Alice chuckled. “They never had another after that. But that’s where we come from, all of us Foleys.”

“What happened to the Washington family?” I asked.

“No one knows, honey. No one knows.”