At last, the men got down off the wagon and the horses made noisy commotion again with their mouths and hooves. Bett took the sleeping arm out of its bent-up place and loosened her grip on the underneath boards. It began to rain as they rode away and she tried not to shiver but remembered that it is a help against cold and that some of the flour would be washed away although she was coated and sticky and lay in discomfort, frightened, longing to get back on her feet. She wiggled her fingers to keep them awake and moved her legs that were wet with the urine she had passed when the men rode away. Her bowels complained and she bit her lip enough to make it bleed.
By evening they had come to a river that would have to be crossed, and when the wagon stopped, Bett climbed down barely able to walk and stumbled into a thicket to relieve herself.
“They are waiting to help just up the path,” the driver called out to her.
From behind the shield of a hackberry bush, she heard the wheels turn against underbrush and clatter over a wooden bridge. It was a strange form of goodness, she thought, this great charity that was anonymous.
Up the path – a gristmill. Resslers. Bett’s nerves were a surprise to her. Wasn’t she used to addressing closed doors behind which some form of suffering always waited? Wasn’t she holding her medicine bag as usual, although her legs were shaking and she was covered with pastry flour? The rain had let up, but it was still part of the air and she went through the wet grass, picking her way around puddles standing like mirrors.
At a small, ramshackle farmhouse with a bird painted on its window, Mary spoke the three words she had been told by the miller were required of her: “I have freight.” She showed the baby.
“The barn is there open.” It might have been her Grandmother Dickinson’s voice with its Old World accents.
When she reached it, Mary was brought up short by the scent of dried timothy grass. It reminded her of the barn at the Clarke plantation where she had watched a slave sale in March. A mother had been sold to a man from out of town while her daughter went to someone up from Tennessee. “She never would learn,” Mister Clarke had complained, as if saddened by willful ignorance. Mary had edged up to the weeping mother. “Oh the poor child,” she had blurted out. “If only you had run away before this could happen.”
The woman had only glanced at Mary. “I oughta not take a little chile with me if I run, missus, could I?” That mother had thought of her child first. Perhaps Jemima had done so too, in her way. She remembered Bett saying she would go north the very minute Bry was old enough and Mary had argued the danger of that and convinced her father to take Bett in, although it had cost him more than he could afford. He had thought Bett would be free when the debt to the widow was paid. That’s what she had told herself, as well, even when she did not say to her husband that the payments were now his to make. What is it about the smell of a barn, or a garden or an opened trunk that can remind us of past mistakes? she wondered, pacing the floor with Jemima’s squalling baby. The farmer’s wife had said she knew a woman who could suckle her, but Mary was afraid of calling attention to the stolen child. Instead there would be cow’s milk warmed at a stove. She spread a cloth and put the baby on a hay bale. Skin the perfect colour of an autumn leaf. The fingers fit tightly around Mary’s thumb. And the eyes were large and expressionless, dark brown shot with amber lights as if waiting to see what life would bring. Mary remembered Bry as a newborn, a little noisier, darker of skin and mood, being the child of tragedy, not love. “You are so like your father,” she had told him. But she had wondered about that.
Mary put her face on the baby. Nothing so sweet as this, she thought, and her own skin itched, so she rubbed the baby with her hands and a bit of Bett’s witch hazel, then wiped her with a cloth, thinking of Bett’s great knowledge – the way she had gone out in all seasons but especially in early spring, when the sap began its rise, to strip the bark off certain trees and boil it down. There were those who thought the tonics were trickery and hoax, like Doctor Howard with his threats or Ruth, who had tricks of her own. Mary remembered the dress her father had bought her because he thought Ruth could not sew.
When the farmer’s wife came in with the milk, the two women sat together enjoying the sound of the newborn’s noisy satisfaction. A baby’s hunger was as uncomplicated as fright but easier to cure, Mary thought, as Luveen’s lullaby came into her head: There’s a new world a’coming, won’t you come along with me … . all of it there to be sung, and how good it would be to bring this little one to the wondering eyes of Luveen. Then Mary wondered if the old woman might not be dismayed. It was not going to be an easy life for this little girl. In what river are the falls between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario? How high is the precipice over which the water falls?
“So much to learn,” she whispered to the baby, who was feeding efficiently. She then asked the farmwoman about other travellers. Had she helped anyone get as far as the Ohio? Where was the best place to cross? What was the route? Had she seen a woman with shorn hair? Or a boy of about fifteen years of age?
The response was a vague description of the next stopping place. Apparently no one could be trusted, not even a white woman travelling with such a baby as this.
CLEVELAND MORNING NEWS
ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR REWARD. Ran away from the subscriber, calling himself Bry, about fifteen years, 5 feet 9 inches, and of a copper color. He can read and write and may have forged a pass. I will give the above reward to any one who will secure him in any way so as to make good on my debt to another. R. Fox. Jonesville, VA
A place that was mellow with light slanting past each dusty house and yard and barn and beyond it an old church lost in a grove of papaws. Then an overgrown lot. A young girl had brought Mary here, making a deal of conversation when all that awaited them was the lot with its weeds and trees and a dismal shed. The girl pulled a piece of canvas away from its front. “Go in,” she said, “where that newborned chile can repose.”
“My horse must have …” Mary instantly wished she had not made her words sound like an order. She carried the baby to a pile of hay that sat in a shine of reflected light and lay her down softly. Beautiful baby, tenderest of smiles. She looked for water and moved to a corner to uncover a dish that might contain food. It held a soupy gruel made of tapioca and yams that she tipped into her mouth. A table. A stool. She put her head on the table as exhaustion overtook her. When she closed her eyes, she felt the great loss of Wiley that always came to her when she was close to sleep. If only he could help her now in this search. If only she could tell him that it didn’t matter anymore that he had been with Rafe and Eb that day. She raised her head when she heard a sound.
“It’s some goat milk.” The girl asked if she could do the feeding and Mary smiled and wondered how many arms this child would know before she was grown. Never the arms of a mother. The girl said her father was sold but her mother was free and they had a deed to three acres through the charity of a samaritan.
Mary listened to the story while the girl fed Jemima’s baby. “You are very good at that.”
“I had my own one, but he passed to God.”
When the baby had eaten her fill, the young girl placed her carefully back on the hay. Then Mary lay down on it too, thinking how foolish she had been to believe she would ever find Bett or Bry in this patchwork of mountains and valleys and hills. Perhaps they had crossed through the Gap and gone more directly into Kentucky, although the way would be treacherous. Who could say what a fleeing boy or a searching mother might do? With her cart, Mary might be well ahead of them, even if they were on the same track. And if they never allowed themselves a road? How would they ever cross paths? Her search was hopeless and she fell hard asleep.
At some hour of darkness a wind came up and sharp needles of rain began to strike at the bare tin roof. What was the smell in the air? Lightning. She lifted her head and picked herself up, moving at a crawl, seeing that the baby was asleep, and shoving through the canvas flap. Out in the rain, the stars had fl
ed. All around were the trees dripping tears and the dark sky was weeping between them. Mary unbuttoned her dress and pulled it over her head, standing now in her corset and bloomers, stockings and boots. A few hours earlier she had passed a slave cemetery where a painted sign read:
The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master. Job 3:19.
In her bag there was a bar of hard soap and this she retrieved, taking off her underclothes and boots so that she stood only in her skin to rub soap and cloth against each other, and even the taken-off dress that had buttons made of ivory and was cut from hard flax. It would never be the same after this foaming rigour of suds. She put her head back and drank in cold rain. All the babies she and Bett had brought down together, one and the same. All the mothers. And the croups and the fevers, the bones set, pleasures and fears. And the servant is free from his master. As Mary scrubbed the soft bloomers and the rough stockings with soap made of bacon grease, she wondered what it would take to make her clean. Should she take off this layer of skin and the next? Should she rub to the bone and then try to sing? What good would she be without skin? She laughed at herself then and dragged the hard soap through her hair, first untying her braid, so that the soap could bring the blood up to her scalp and the rain would act as rinse. Oh the preciousness of tears; what would our flesh be without them?
Before sunrise she donned her damp clothing and set out after a meal of bread and cheese. Her cape would cover the dress until the sun emerged to dry it. Someone had left a small packet of food in her cart, nicely wrapped, and the thought of the girl coming out before dawn gave her new heart to go on. Or should she go back? She lay the baby in a nest of cloth and remembered the time she had sat with her father on the banks of the Powell, begging him not to cross. It was too wide. Too fast.
It was cold on this hilltop and there were colder mountains ahead. Bett couldn’t have come so far. How could she manage such distance? For Bry it might be easier, but Mary would never find him in all the thickness of forest. She climbed up into the cart, which was wet. The road she had taken to come here was full of deep ruts, muddy from the storm, but she turned the horse and set off toward home. The baby began to cry, and she could feel the ache of it in her breast. Mothers let down milk and yet she had none to give, only a wooden cask wrapped in wet cloth given by a childless girl. For a time she went on, but the cry was meaningful and she stopped the cart, getting down in some haste, pulling the hood of her cape up against cold and fog. It made no sense to be out here on this hilltop alone with a baby to be fed and her own dry breasts. It made no sense to seek two runaways who were trying not to be found. In the distance she could make out the shape of a woman, moving as if sore of foot or slightly lame. It seemed to Mary that such a one should be taking more care, for who knew what might come along in the dawn to trouble her? Mary poured the goat milk little by little into Joseph’s feeder. She picked up the howling child and gentled her, whispering, bringing that lullaby back to her mind that had once belonged to Luveen.
All night Bett had been climbing steadily and her legs were cramped and her feet were ragged and as dawn lit the edge of the forest, the landscape rolled itself into steeper hills, into colder valleys, and these were rent with the sounds of owls and wolves as if one thing must always be hunting another. Bett had walked through a night of hard rain. She had gathered handfuls of wild mulberries and savoured them.
How good it would be to lend her body to the purpose of finding a warm place to rest as the sun came up on the side of this endless mountain while the birds awoke and took flight, going south. She stopped in her tracks and looked up at the heavens, full as they were of noisy, awakening life. She thought that if Bry had wings, he would be lifted and carried over the hard miles to come. Her legs. Her feet. How heavy she felt. How earthbound she was with so many mountains and valleys and rivers to cross. And now she had come to a hollow in the side of this mountain still dark, not having been found by the sun. But there was no sign of shelter, only a narrow twist of road and a wind that cut through her wet clothes and the crying of something sounding almost human, like a child. Ahead was a mountain higher than any she had seen and darkly forbidding in this cold predawn, but she moved on past a grove of sugar maples fired with the colours of death and into a mass of hemlock. Would she find Bry before the snow came? The North Star was always there, outshining the moon, but there were no mulberries in this hollow and the maple trees were untapped and she looked at the road, which would make travel easier, and saw that someone was up there, leaning against a cart, a woman in a long, dark cape. Fog clung to the trees that grew beside the road and she crept a bit closer, smelling the hemlock pitch and the musk of the deer who had slept between the trunks, her senses sharp. The cry was sweet and piercing, a baby’s cry, and Bett listened, moving forward, careful not to be seen. On the ridge, the woman was walking, going back and forth on the road, up and down, doing her best to soothe the child in her arms. Her song was carried on the wind, and Bett came out of the trees and began to run toward her, hiking her skirt up for speed.
Daniel put his spade in the dirt under the apple tree, thinking of the grave he had dug years before. He watched as his sons came across the yard carrying the coffin. It was a simple box and they moved easily, as if treading an expanse of quiet water, Benjamin talking, John’s head bowed, Isaac, as eldest, bearing the weight of one end alone. Ruth came out of the house looking at the ground as if she could not meet the eyes of the living. I have disappointed her, Daniel thought as she came to stand by him in her worn dress, her apron, her boots and cap, and he was glad to have her there nevertheless.
They lowered Jemima into the darkest dark and Daniel prayed in his silent way but there was no absolution for the father. Ruth took a carved wooden doll – the one Jemima had loved in her childhood – out of an apron pocket and set it on the ground amid fallen apples while Daniel thought of the night she had climbed the ladder to the loft and carried Jemima down. Thee must find a proper mother for thy orphans, his father had said, and Daniel ached for Ruth Boyd, although he turned from her now and went alone to the shed. There was the harness on its peg, the saddle on its shelf, and Miss Patch moving her ears at the sound of resolve in his step.
To reach the land he had bought from Michael Shoffert, he went briefly onto the road and when he looked back he saw the house he had built and beyond it the future house of Benjamin. It was made of red brick and had four chimneys, two at either end. In his mind, as if drawn there, he saw the white pillars of the front porch arrayed like sentinels. On the road, there were puddles in which he saw his reflection, and that of his horse, whose dark hooves glittered while she blew out her cheeks and shook her long head, jingling the bits of metal on her harness.
He thought then of Mary, his dearest and wisest child. Stubborn and certain, she had gone to do right, pulling the hood of her cape up and tying it firmly against the wind. She will find her way, Daniel thought, and he gave thanks for that.
He came to a rippling brook that fed all the acres he had bought, keeping them fertile and promising. Like children, Daniel thought, and he rode through the water into high grass that swept at his legs. There, ahead of him, leaning against the dusk, was the tree he had left so long unvisited. He slid off his horse and reached for the axe he had brought in his saddle pack. For if a tree bears not fruit, it must be hewn down. He could hear his father’s voice, far away and indistinct, and looked at his hardened hands.
Then he stood in autumnal shade, listening to the sharp click of pods, feeling the worn handle of his ready axe. But when he lifted it, there was a rustling sound that flooded the chanted air. It came out of bark that was ravined and cavernous and from the golden leaves, exhaling. It matched his own breath, and he stood listening, hearing fallen pods rub against roots, beginnings against source, tree out of tree.
He thought of how he had built his house out of numbers of trees and that what he had taken had not been given, and he thought then about Simus and said, �
�Thee did not choose me, but I chose thee.” It was a confession of living flesh.
He dropped the axe, letting his eyes travel time and length and span, and he went on breathing in, in, seeing, at the base of the trunk near the ground, a glint of thimble, embedded. Enough to hold all of them, everything. And when he raised his eyes to the darkest branches overhead, a trace of pale moon was waiting to take back the sky.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks first and always with love to Michael. For every grace during this journey. For support, counsel, and fond interest. I am hugely grateful. And yours.
Ellen Seligman, extraordinary editor beyond any reckoning, I thank you in every language. This book was waiting for you.
Blessings on Kendra Ward for her thoughtful help and on Heather Sangster for her patience and insightful copy editing.
Ellen Levine, dear friend and agent, thank you for constant support and encouragement throughout.
Ann Close, thank you for your careful reading of early drafts of the manuscript and for your belief in the book.
Sara Dickinson, eldest daughter of my brother Skip, thank you for coming with me to Jonesville, Virginia, along the same route Daniel took in 1798. Inspired by a trip Ruth and Martin Dickinson made many years ago in search of family history, we became sleuths, raiding the Jonesville courthouse for census records and property deeds and discovering Benjamin Dickinson’s slave-built house, thanks to the Masons, who are its present inhabitants and who gave us a tour that included the cellar where Benjamin’s slaves were shamefully kept. We saw what is left of Daniel’s cabin (a pile of logs and most of the stones from the fireplace) and three fallen gravestones under a gnarly tree.
The Purchase Page 28
