Patience & Sarah

by Isabel Miller

  To save my boots, I carried them, tied together, over my shoulder. I settled into a good ground-covering swing. A man can walk four miles an hour, but I don’t think I was making that much. All Connecticut tilts up to the north, to let the rivers run down to the Sound, so even where I seemed to have a flat way I knew I was going uphill. It would be uphill all the way. All to the good, I thought. It would help my belly break.

  But my hip joints worked so smooth, and my muscles felt so long and strong, that I kind of knew I wasn’t about to break. I kind of didn’t want to break, anyway. My feet had soles like boot leather, and arches like stone bridges. They wouldn’t bleed. They’d carry me to the edge of the world if I wanted to go that far. Just up Connecticut and Massachusetts and across York State would be easy.

  Noontime I knew I had to eat. I didn’t want to stop already, while somebody might still say, “Why, you ain’t Sam Nobody, you’re Ira Dowling’s gal.” I went until I crossed a creek, and stopped then and unrolled my blanket and ate, very slow, in little bits, a little jerky and a little nocake, with a whole lot of water between bits.

  Then on again, covering ground. It was a pretty day, April and all. Just right.

  Towards night I asked a farmer could I sleep in his barn. He looked me over for something to be against, but there I was, a simple farmer boy. “Reckon,” he said, so I went on into his haymow, which was pretty much empty, as could be expected by April. There was a little hay, though – folks do hate to feed the last of it till they see the next will be along – and I scooped what I could into a nest and flopped down.

  The farmer came in and perched on the edge of the mow and pecked away at me with questions. I told everything true except my name. He said I’d never get to Genesee. He said I was a fool and should’ve stayed where I was. He said I was no twenty-one, without a whisker like I was, and shouldn’t claim it.

  I asked if he had a chore or two I might do for some supper. He said he figured he could spare a little samp and milk, being as it looked like a good year, and being as he had a boy himself, older though, pushing out through that godforsaken wilderness somewhere. Never mind the chores.

  I hope his boy fared better than the summer did. It was the famous summer of 1816, when it snowed off and on over most of New England the whole summer long. But it still looked all right in April.

  I ate with his family. There were some girls, and then a boy only sixteen with some sure-enough sprouts on his chin. He wanted to hear all about Genesee. I told him all I could, in my deepest voice. The girls listened too, one in particular.

  My eyes kept closing by themselves, but the boy wouldn’t stop asking me what it was like out there. He followed me out to the barn, asking, and was still asking when I feel asleep.

  Someone’s touch made me stir. I thought it was the boy, and mumbled, “I told you all I know.” I thought it was still night and I hadn’t slept at all, but it was earliest morning, dawn, with the birds really blaring, and who woke me was the girl who’d listened so.

  “Sam, you have to go,” she said. “Now. Hurry.”

  I woke right up and started rolling my pack before I asked, “Why?”

  “Papa’s going to turn you in as a runaway prentice.”

  “But I ain’t.”

  “I don’t know. I just know he’s going to, for the reward. He said last night. I let you sleep till birdsong.”

  I stepped down behind the barn. I guess she didn’t peek, because she still called me “Sam” when I went back in to get my pack. She had cheese and a big cut of bread for me, and some milk that I drank right away so’s to leave her the cup.

  She kept looking at me peculiar and standing peculiar, sort of close of close to me. I didn’t know what to make of her.

  “I’m obliged to you,” I said, if that was what she wanted.

  “It’s nothing.” She kept on.

  “I better get off,” I said.

  She said, “You better,” but she had me by the arm and I didn’t like to jerk away.

  “It’s getting pretty light. They’ll be about,” I said.

  And she pushed up and kissed me.

  I was just so surprised. Did girls act like that with boys as a regular thing?

  Before I had a chance to enjoy the kiss it was over and she was laughing and pushing me out saying, “Good luck, Sam. You’re sweet. Hurry.”

  Just remembering her kiss kept me grinning and I stepped along so fine. Being a boy was going to be pretty good. I pictured girls all the way to Genesee giving me little laughy kisses and keeping my spirit up. I began to see it might be better this way than getting all tore up by caring a lot. A kiss that you feel deep tears you deep later when it’s lost. But a laughy kiss hurries you on your way and makes the miles fly.

  People I passed looked at me and I felt so good I smiled even when they didn’t. We’re not strong for smiling in Connecticut, as a rule. I didn’t take it personal.

  Towards night, again, I asked to be put up. The farmer this time made me work for it, mending a stone wall the winter had thrown down. I was near spoiled enough to think I shouldn’t have to. Then his wife fed me good and gave me the use of a husk mattress. I threw it down on the floor of the empty corncrib and slept like a cloud.

  Next morning I couldn’t get out. I pounded and hollered, and was just starting with my hatchet when the farmer came up.

  “Don’t do that, boy,” he said.

  “Well, let me out then.”

  “We’ll just wait a while.”

  “What for?”

  “For the newspaper,” he said. “To see who’s looking for a runaway prentice about five foot eight with brown hair that likes to say he’s twenty-one but he’s no more’n fourteen, and whatever his name is it ain’t Sam. Leastwise if you say, ‘Sam,’ he half the time don’t hear.”

  “I’m no prentice.”

  “If they’s nothing in the paper, I”ll let you go and no harm done.”

  “I got a long ways to go. You let me out or I’ll chop my way out.”

  “You chop my corncrib, boy, and the sheriff will see to you.”

  I believed him and I didn’t have time for sheriffs.

  “When’s the paper come?”

  “Any day now it should be along.”

  “Any day!”

  “Just settle in.”

  His wife pushed my eats between the slats. I studied what would make her help me, like turn her back and close her ears while I broke out. Her face was so mean and tired I doubted anything would.

  I’m shamed to say I let him keep me two days, even though I could’ve pried my way out easy while they slept. I didn’t quite want to sleep on the bare ground with snakes about. Snakes have always been a little hard for me. Pa used to say I was a pretty fair boy except about snakes. I’d worked my feelings around to where I could face them all right awake, but I didn’t like the idea of being asleep around them.

  So I let that farmer waste two days for me before the paper came and he turned me loose. He still thought I was a prentice and that the next paper would say so, but he kept his word and let me go.

  I pushed on. I could see where it might take a good long time to get to Genesee.

  My next farmer said right off, “A runaway prentice!” but he thought I was just right to run away and not be ground down and abused. “He didn’t feed you right, did he? He didn’t clothe you warm. He didn’t teach you nothing. Come on, Sam, you can tell me.”

  “But I’m no prentice.”

  “Sam, I’m your friend. I’m for you. I wouldn’t turn you in. I know them wicked masters. Just cause you’re big for your age, they work you like an ox. How old are you, Sam? Fourteen?”

  I suppose I should’ve thought up a tale for him, he wanted one so.

  Well, that’s how it went. I pushed clear to Massachusetts without finding anyone that didn’t hold me back one way or the other – to get a reward for me, or try to draw a tale out of me – and I got no more kisses. I began to see how boys aren’t much bet
ter off than women. Men are the ones who get their way and run the world. I began to see that I could stop looking like a boy in ten or twenty more years without looking any more like a man, and that even if I could fight past all these people and get to Genesee, I still wouldn’t be paid a man’s wage or let to make my way.

  If it hadn’t been that Pa was expecting me, I might’ve gone back.

  I was that discouraged.

  But no matter how I felt, I kept the sun at my back and the river at my haw side, and kept on. There’d be wagons on the road, and some buggies and folks would slow down to look me over, but nobody offered to carry me, and I took care not to look interested being carried. I’d stopped looking for help from folks. I got so I didn’t even look up at who passed, except once a rig went by that was so outlandish colored it caught my eye like a bird will that’s bright.

  It was a little blue house on red wheels, and it had yellow curlicues all over it and some white words and a pale green door on the back end. It had boxes on top of it and pails and tools hanging under it, swinging and pretty often crashing together. It slowed down, like they all did – studying if to bother catching me, I figured – and I’d’ve turned my face away except I couldn’t get my fill of that pretty rig. So it came about that when the driver turned his head to keep looking at me, I was gawking right at him. He gave me a fine smile which I needed a lot right then, and it helped me so, I smiled back and when I rounded the next bend what should be pulled up on the roadside but that very same rig, and the driver lolling on the grass making music with a silver whistle.

  He was younger than Pa, but older than me. About thirty, I guessed. I’d surely never seen the like of him before, but some things you just know, like he was a man Edward White wouldn’t trust, and Pa would make fun of. A man that didn’t belong in New England. Me, I never liked anybody so much, except Patience, and that was different. There was no doubt he was showing off for me, but since nobody’d ever bothered to show off for me before, I looked around to make sure there wasn’t somebody else. There was nobody but me.

  I felt the world go bright and the air get easy to breathe, and I just stood there hearing that silvery twiddly music, glad it was spring (it was May by then) and that I was me, and he was him.

  “Runaway apprentice?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Run away from your father?”

  “No.”

  “Had any dinner?”

  “No.”

  He crossed his legs and went from sitting to standing in one easy-looking push. Pa or Edward White should try that. He wiped off his whistle and put it into a blue pouch the exact size of it. You could see from how he did it how much he cared about that whistle. I purely hated to see him put it away, except that then he opened the door of his rig – “van” he called it – and flopped some steps down from inside. I stood so’s to see in as much as I could without appearing too nosey.

  He had the nicest, neatest, prettiest, best-rigged fine little snug home in there, with beds built like shelves one above another and covered with blue and white checkedy quilts tucked in at the edges, and little pretty curtains at the windows. I just wished I could tell my sisters about it, and Ma, and Patience. It made me lonesome to see that snug little home he had and have nobody to tell about it.

  He brought out a basket with bread, cooked meat, and a pieplant pie he said he’d bought off a farmer’s wife. My mouth started to water but he was a man that didn’t pig into anything, so we waited till he’d spread a cloth and arranged everything on it and he’d prayed in a plain way, like to a person, “Lord, thank you for this food, such as it is. And thank you for this good boy to share it with.”

  It would’ve been so simple for him to make me stumble all over myself, being as I didn’t know the first thing about manners and anybody could see he was a born gentleman and knew everything. But his little prayer, and the equal way he looked at me, like it mattered to have me like him, made me feel welcome and easy. I felt he didn’t set himself up as my judge, or take pleasure in me making a mistake.

  His horse was unhitched and chomping along in the grass. Not many men would unhitch for a short noon stop, just to make a beast more comfortable. I felt that this man cared about his horse, and about me, and that he didn’t have any meanness in him. Pa’d always said you’re better off in a bear trap than in the clutches of a Yankee peddler, and he must’ve based that on something, but it wasn’t on this man.

  “You peddle?” I asked. I’d been doing all the talking, about the troubles a boy can fall into on the road, so I figured I’d give him his turn.

  He waited, just a touch, so I knew that those white words said his name and what he peddled and that I’d let him know I couldn’t read. I was mortified, but he gave no sign of noticing beyond that little wait.

  “Yes,” he said. “I travel in books. I follow the circuit rider from court to court and lay out my wares on courthouse steps. Also tavern porches, on market days. My name’s Daniel Peel. Dan Peel. They call me Parson Peel.”

  “A parson!”

  Pa’d also always said that you’re better off in a bear trap than in the clutches of a parson. Pa said parsons scare the dying and gouge the living, and that he’d have no traffic with them, not him nor his woman nor his children. Not even in Connecticut, where you just about had to. He said he didn’t have to, no more than he had to bow down to a king, not in the United States, and there was General Washington to thank. Ma said Meeting’s nice for singing and seeing folks, when you live off on a farm, and she’d kind of like it. You don’t have to heed the words, she said. She’d like to have women in for quilting and all, but she couldn’t without she went to Meeting and mingled and the women got to know her. Poor Ma, all shut up without a friend. Pa said we didn’t need friends bad enough to go listen to a parson’s lies and threats, which us children might take to heart and get scared sick over. I thought a lot of both sides of the question, without being able to make up my mind if Ma or Pa was right. No matter who was right, what Pa thought was what was done.

  Even so, I’d seen parsons around – in the village, at the store, and once in a great while one would even come out to our place to pray over us and try to guide us.

  Parson Peel said, “I was once a parson.”

  “Sawed from the wrong log for it,” I said.

  “So it worked out.”

  I’d meant to please him – who could want to be a born parson? – but he was sad. I liked the way his face showed gentleness, or laughiness, or sadness – whichever he felt.

  He said, “I hoped it could be a happier thing than I’d ever seen it be.”

  Since we were both bound for Barrington, I rode with him. We sat up on his high seat and sped along so fine, with the pails and pans and jacks and chains rattling underneath, and us up there running our mouths. At Barrington I’d push on north and leave him to lay out his stock, so I felt I had to jam a whole life of talk into this little ride. I’m glad I didn’t meet him on my first day out, or I might’ve thought everybody on the outside was like him. As it was, I knew enough to know I’d never see his like again.

  I guess I must’ve talked about home, to make him say I’d missed the main things that civilize a man – school, church, society, books, – so how did I come to be what I was? “You make me doubt my mission,” he said. “Why aren’t you a lout?”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “No. I’d like to hear about your mother. Women civilize, too. What’s she like?”

  “Just a plain farmer woman. Tall. Got rough scratchy hands that scratch your chest when she rubs cough oil on you. I always liked that – like a cat’s tongue.”

  “Does she pray?”

  “Don’t seem to.”

  “Does she sing?”

  “She used to. Last few years she’s been too sad.”

  “It’s the sad that sing.”

  “Well, then she needs some new songs maybe. She likes to shut herself up alone. When the weather’s right, she likes to go
out to the woods. It makes Pa jumpy. He don’t want her to. It’s the only way she stands up to him. She goes anyhow. Once Rachel and me snuck after her, to see what she did. She just sat. We thought we heard her talking to herself, but we couldn’t be sure.”

  “She was praying. She must have been,” Parson said. He thought a while. Then he said, “People live their lives. Somehow they live their lives. It appears that songs and prayers will suffice. Does she tell her dreams? I have a dream book in my stock.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Ma’s dreams with Barrington so near, so I played I couldn’t remember them.

  “Do you get to York State? Did you ever see this Hudson River?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes. I just came from there. Did she whip you?”

  “Whip me? No!”

  “You’re surprised. As the Indians were. When the Indians saw us whipping our children, they thought at first that we must hate our children, but then they thought, no, no one can hate his child. They decided it must be a religious rite, to make the child hate this world and long for the next. We’re a strange vicious people, Sam. I think about us. All the time. What do you think about? Swinging your ax, what do you think?”

  “Of being – not alone – someday. Having my own land.”

  “You seem to think there’s nothing a man can do but farm. A man can make shoes or build ships or peddle books or set bones or print newspapers or look at the stars – ”

  “For a living?”

  “Look at the stars. For a living. Yes. Or make wheels or barrels or crocks or dishes – the world is very big and interesting. Make furniture or bricks or houses or trumpets or violins or pictures.”

  “I know somebody that makes pictures that make you laugh. Like in one, here’s this woman just cut this man’s head off, and he’s laying there with just his neck, and she’s walking away so ordinary with his head in a basket, like regular marketing.”