68 pages • 2 hours read
Elijah of Buxton
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Chapters 21-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary: “Terrorfied in America!”
Elijah heads to the stable alone, prepping his rocks for the bear-fighting dog. He knocks the dog unconscious with a perfect throw. Inside the stable, Elijah smells a strange odor he can’t quite place. When his eyes adjust to the dim light, he sees the Preacher standing at the stable’s far end. The Preacher is not moving; before Elijah can figure out what’s wrong, he sees “dark bundles or sacks up ’gainst the lefthand side of the stable” (293).
When the “sacks” move, he thinks they are ghosts. Then one of the shapes speaks, wondering if Elijah is a “haint.” Elijah sees that the five shapes are chained slaves: a woman with a baby girl; a man, Kamau, who is the baby’s father; two more men; and a boy a bit younger than Elijah. The woman tells Elijah that Kamau and the others are “full-blood Africans” (302). Kamau’s English is minimal, and the other men and the boy don’t speak English. Elijah brings water to the woman, who gives some to the baby. Elijah must give water to the others himself because of the chains on their wrists.
Elijah brings out the pistol and explains his mission, but the woman tells him the Preacher is dead. Elijah then sees that the Preacher is unmoving because the “paddy-rollers” have tied ropes around his neck to strangle him.
The woman learns from Elijah that they are only an hour from Canada. She expects that the slavers will take her, Kamau, and the baby back to Kentucky. Elijah recalls playing abolitionists and slavers with friends in Buxton. Now that he’s witnessed slaves who “were chained in in a way that [he] ain’t never seen even the wildest, worstest animal chained” (308), Elijah knows he will never play that game again. He feels humbled in the face of their bravery and vows to get the slaves free.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Busting Free”
Elijah thinks he can shoot the drunk guard and take the keys. He tells the woman about the Liberty Bell and starts crying. Another plan of Elijah’s involves using Mr. Taylor’s knife on the sleeping man. The woman gently proves the impossibility of his plans. Next Elijah tries to pull the chains from the wall, but they won’t budge. The woman soothes Elijah’s frustrations, telling him he must calm down so as not to further upset the young boy, and tells him to “quit your agitating ’fore you ends up shackled too. Some things just ain’t meant to be changed” (314). The woman takes the silver pistol, referring to herself as Chloe. She asks Elijah how it works and how many bullets it carries. Elijah sees that she is strong enough to hold and fire the pistol; when Mrs. Chloe says, “Maybe it be best if I keep this gun” (317), Elijah doesn’t argue, though he wonders if she intends to use the gun on the slaves and herself.
When Elijah mentions school, Mrs. Chloe has Elijah hold her baby. She says that the baby likes Elijah very much, and without being clear, she hints at the idea of giving the baby to Elijah to take to Canada. Elijah knows that he must decipher her true meaning, but he cannot figure out what she means. He returns the baby to her. He wants desperately to free them all, and when he remembers that Mr. Alston helped Mr. Highgate, his hopes renew, and he runs to find him.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Riding Hard Back to Buxton”
Elijah finds Mr. Alston and tells him about the slaves in the stable. He assumes the men will help him free Mrs. Chloe and the others, but to his surprise, they refuse. Mr. Alston reminds him that America’s laws are different from Canada’s; in fact, “It was the sheriff what let them slave hunters lay over in that stable” (324). Mr. Alston tells Elijah to go home, and when Elijah protests, one of the other men hits Elijah. Mr. Alston intercedes, and Elijah runs away crying. He begins riding on Jingle Boy but stops to vomit. He is torn between riding home to get help and going back to the slaves as he promised. Finally, he thinks of Mrs. Chloe telling him to go home, and he starts for Buxton.
Chapter 24 Summary: “The Revenge of Mr. Frederick Douglass”
Elijah rides Jingle Boy a mile and stops. He knows suddenly what Mrs. Chloe wanted him to do with her daughter. He returns to the stable, throws another rock to take down the bear-fighting dog again, and goes in. Mrs. Chloe is disappointed to hear that the men were too fearful to come.
Elijah tells Mrs. Chloe that he realized on the ride home how much her daughter reminds him of his deceased baby sister. He also says his mother still mourns, wears black, and wanders the woods at night in grief. He tells Mrs. Chloe that his mother hopes “there’d be some way she could raise another child” (333). Elijah thinks of these lies as “growned-folks language” and finishes by saying again how much his Ma would appreciate another daughter, whether it was her own by birth or not.
Mrs. Chloe asks what they should do, and Elijah asks to “borrow” the baby girl to take back to Buxton. Mrs. Chloe is proud that Elijah saw through what she wasn’t spelling out and beams at the thought of her little girl growing up free. She agrees. Elijah promises to take excellent care of the baby, whom Mrs. Chloe calls Hope. After letting Kamau say goodbye to her, Elijah leaves. He empties his tote and uses it as a baby sling. He thinks Mrs. Brown will be the right choice to raise Hope.
When Elijah and Hope get to the ferry at dawn, he tells her in Pa’s words, “Today you’re truly free, and you choosed the most beautifullest, most perfectest day for doing it!” (341). He raises Hope up, and she throws up on him. Elijah laughs, thinking this is Frederick Douglass finally getting back at him. He travels “mule-speed” back after the ferry, and they make it safely to Buxton by noon.
Chapters 21-24 Analysis
In these chapters, Elijah’s growth in maturity helps him to overcome two challenges that plague him in early parts of the novel: his fearfulness and his inability to understand adults.
Everything Elijah witnesses in the stable fills him with fear. The sight of the Preacher’s stillness is eerie and wrong. The smell in the air raises his alarms. When he notices the “bundles,” Elijah thinks at first they might be ghosts, and this scares him so badly—“I’d gone and get myself right in the middle of being fra-gile again” (294)—that he feels faint and falls to the stable floor. He hears the chains clinking and worries the shapes are dogs like the one outside, or even demons. When he finally sees that these “bundles” are chained slaves, the intensity of his emotions threatens to weaken him; for example, when the young boy holds Elijah’s hand to his mouth in gratitude for the drink of water, “It rip[s] at [Elijah’s] insides something harsh” (303).
At no point, though, does Elijah try to run away as he did with the hoop snakes or the cookie jar. He manages his fear, calms himself, and refocuses on his role in helping the slaves.
Elijah also overcomes the challenge of understanding the subtext and subtle meanings of important adult messages. Early in the novel, situations such as adults’ exaggerated recollections of Elijah’s vomiting incident with Mr. Frederick Douglass and the discrepancy regarding rumors about the Preacher’s silver pistol cause Elijah to react with consternation: “That don’t make no sense, that don’t make no sense atall” (63). As the novel progresses, Elijah works to understand grown-ups’ motivations, as when the Duncan sisters elect to keep the discovery of their younger sister to themselves for a time.
Finally, in these closing chapters of the story, Elijah’s understanding of a complex adult message is complete and powerful. It is crucial to Mrs. Chloe that Elijah’s willingness to take Hope be sincere and organic, so she raises the idea only by hinting at it in cloaked comments. She takes a chance that Elijah will understand. When he does, he is pleased and proud of himself, and he sees the impact his comprehension has on Mrs. Chloe when she tells him, “You done lift something heavier than any wagon of stones off my heart, Elijah of Buxton” (337).
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