The sun had long since dropped below the horizon, but the humid air still clung to every surface inside Doctor Chandler’s barn. Fireflies blinked lazily beyond the open door, and Kent Marlon leaned against the weathered frame, watching shadows stretch across the trees lining New Raleigh Road.
It was June 4, 1860, and the four of them—Kent, Hannah, Emma, and Merritt—had spent the day scouting the area, working out how to best watch the road. The toll gate on Randolph made that path too risky. The smarter route, they'd figured, was to keep an eye on traffic headed east, toward the old crossing near the Siebert property.
Behind him, Merritt and Emma were in quiet conversation. Hannah stood nearby, arms crossed, her eyes alert, just like his.
Kent tilted his head toward her. “You know, for a girl from Scranton, you’ve got a decent sense of Tennessee backroads.”
Hannah smirked. “And for a Bronx boy, you’re getting good at admitting I’m right.”
“Yeah,” Kent replied, “but which Bronx boy are we talking about? I’m struggling to know where all the other versions of me end and where I begin.”
Hannah nodded, letting her eyes fall. “Same… Sometimes, I’m the engineer from the future. Right now, I feel like the doctor from 1880 who had to be a burlesque dancer because she wasn’t a man, and the Memphis hospital wouldn’t have a woman doctor.”
From deeper inside the barn, Merritt chimed in. “Emma's the only one of us who actually grew up near here. Vicksburg’s not that far, right?”
Emma shrugged with a grin. “Close enough to have opinions. Far enough to deny it if things go bad. And, Hannah…”
Emma’s head shook off whatever she was going to say.
Hannah wouldn’t let it go. “What, Emma?”
“I reckon,” Emma replied, “you got a little taste o’ what being black was like. After Emancipation, things didn’t get much better for them. I feel bad, sometimes, how my poor sharecropper family treated the Black sharecroppers we lived beside.”
Hannah shook her head. “Well, it’s a bad taste. That’s for sure.
They waited near the barn for several hours, marking time. The night air thickened, and just as Kent considered stretching his legs, the sounds of movement on the road snapped all of them to attention.
Fabric rustled. Feet shuffled. Breath caught in the quiet.
Kent led the Time Travelers close enough to see what was happening, then raised a hand. “Hold up.”
Emerging from the shadows of the roadside trees was an older white woman in a shawl, guiding a family of three Black people—a father, mother, and daughter—along the dirt road. Their steps were quiet but quick, heads low, eyes scanning the dark.
The woman stopped and eyed the group warily. Her voice was measured. “You folks friends with Doc Chandler?”
Kent stepped forward slowly, hands relaxed. “No, ma’am. Just watching the road. Name’s Kent. That’s Hannah, Merritt, and Emma.”
The woman gave a slow nod. “Name’s Geneva Carter. This here’s the Davis family—Josiah, Ruth, and Naomi. What you folks doing here?”
Emma took a half step forward, her voice returning to that of the Emma born in 1861. “Ma’am, we got the notion we could do some good. Like a vision from heaven, you might say. We got the notion someone like you’d be comin’ along, an’ we’d be doin’ a right good thing if we could help out.”
“Vision from heaven?” Geneva shook her head. “Well bless me, my prayers done been answered. You can guess what we’re doing here.”
“Yes ‘am” Emma replied. “Underground Railroad.”
“Now hush with that talk,” Geneva said, pressing a finger to her lips. “We don’t speak them words out here. We’ve come from the Mississippi line. Tryin’ for that bridge near Siebert’s land, on account the Wolf’s up high in its banks and too dangerous to ford.”
Merritt stepped closer. “You’ll want someone to watch your back. We’ll walk with you.”
Geneva squinted at him, then the others. “Ain’t from ‘round here, are you?”
“No, ma’am,” Hannah said gently. “But we’ve got more at stake than you’d guess.”
At that, Josiah spoke up. “If’n it suits you, ma’am, we might rightly do well with some help. An’ we ain’t got no time to spare.”
Geneva nodded, and the eight set off away from Doctor Chandler’s barn. They walked quietly through the thick summer dark. The road curved, trees bowing low overhead, when a distant rattling of wheels reached Kent’s ears.
But piercing the night air was something the Pinkerton detective version of Kent knew all too well—the sharp clink of shackles, their iron cuffs and chains ringing with a sound his ears would never forget.
Kent turned sharply to Geneva. “Off the road—now. North side. Keep going for the bridge. We’ll handle this.”
Without hesitation, Geneva led the Davises off into the brush, her voice a fading whisper in the dark. “Oh Lawdy, have mercy!”
The four Time Travelers moved pressed along the road, moving toward the sounds—and waited.
Moments later, a wagon pulled by a single horse rounded the bend. Two white men rode up front, scanning the road ahead. When they saw the group, they slowed, eyes narrowing.
The man on the reins called out. “You seen any darkies come through here? Got some runaways loose. We’re authorized.”
Kent stepped into their line of sight. “They’re not here. And you’re not welcome.”
“You talkin’ to me, boy?” the second man spat. “You don’t get to say who’s welcome.”
Hannah stood beside Kent and pointed squarely at them. “You’ve got no claim to people’s lives.”
“They ain’t people,” the first man muttered. “They’re property. Law says so.”
Hannah’s voice was quiet but steel. “The law is wrong. And somewhere deep down, you know they are human.”
“The law’s the law, an’ them animals need to be kept in line where they belong. Ain’t a human drop o’ blood in all of ‘em combined!”
“If they aren’t human,” Hannah said sharply, her voice steady and Northern, “then maybe you can explain why so many men like you keep trying to bed the women you say aren’t worth anything. Seems to me you only remember their humanity when it serves your… appetite.”
“Now, hold on a minute!” the first man said. “You’re twisting things up.”
The second man pointed at Merritt. “Boy, you better bridle your woman, if you know what’s good for you.”
Merritt shook his head, and Kent spoke up. “Listen up, you’d be smart to listen to my wife. You have no idea how wrong you are and how right she is.”
The two men clambered down from the wagon and the second man pointed. “Your wife? Boy, you better reel her in and control her mouth.”
Kent pointed back at the man. “She’s got every right to speak, and you’d be better off if you listened.”
At that, the first man pulled out a knife. “Reckon you need a lesson in who’s got the right to speak?”
Emma surprised everyone except Merritt when she moved forward quickly, one hand behind her back, the other wagging a finger at the man with the knife. “Tell me somethin’… Your face ever catch fire? Looks like it did, and then you let someone put it out with an ice pick?”
The man blinked, confused. “What in all tarnation are you talkin’ about? My face ain’t never been on fire!”
Kent knew what was about to happen. It would be the second the Time Travelers changed history with a small, aerosol container. Kent had stopped a kid with a gun once—with the pepper spray Emma had insisted everyone carry on that mission. Now it was time to stop a slaver.
Emma whipped her hand from behind her back, pointed, and blasted him in the eyes. The man screamed, dropped the knife, and staggered backward, howling in pain.
“How about now?” Emma asked. “Face on fire yet?”
Before the second man could lunge, Merritt stepped between him and Emma. Calm, squared up, and unmoving.
“You want some, too?” Merritt asked, raising his own canister, knuckles white around it.
The man froze, blinking at the strange device, his instincts warring with his pride. He backed up slowly.
Kent moved to Merritt’s side. “Back to your wagon. Turn it around. Go.”
The men muttered curses as they stumbled back toward the wagon. The one Emma had sprayed kept crying out, gripping his face. His partner helped him climb up to the seat.
Just before climbing up, the second man glanced one last time over his shoulder. His eyes locked with Hannah’s.
She didn’t flinch.
Something in his face flickered. Kent watched close as he looked down, then took a second look at Hannah.
Then something happened that nearly no one would have noticed. But a Pinkerton man was trained to see things, even in the faintest of light.
The man curled one side of his mouth slightly, looked down to the left, then up to the right. Kent knew that meant he was thinking hard about something.
Perhaps, he was planning a counter attack. Kent prepared to engage him, but… perhaps, though it was something else.
The man then shook his head, and turned away without a word.
They turned the wagon and rode off in silence, their threats trailing behind them like dust in the moonlight.
The Time Travelers waited until they were out of sight, then confirmed that Geneva and the Davis family were long gone. They were nowhere to be found south of the bridge.
At that, Merritt looked at the others. ““Okay… back to the barn. With luck, we’ll wake up in Brooklyn and not get stuck in 1860.”
Kent felt the 2025 version of him utter agreement with a phrase as unfamiliar to 1985 as it would have been in 1860: “Bet!”
