by Ann Treacy
Stoop . . . lift . . . swing . . . thunk. Martin loved chopping wood. It had been his job at Pa’s livery stable, back before they lost it. But he still hated the small country school. Stoop . . . lift . . . swing . . . thunk. With every blow he imagined striking those damn Barker boys. They ridiculed him constantly for living on the worst farm in the county. They never let up about there being no horses on the place. Stoop . . . lift . . . swing . . . thunk. Martin was focused so intensely on punishing the wood that he didn’t hear a man approaching.
“You’re pretty good with that ax. For a boy.”
Martin’s swing went wild, landing hard in the stump. Trying not to appear startled, he turned slowly and saw a town man dressed in a white suit.
“How’d you come by here?” he asked, noting the absence of horse or wagon.
The man smiled. “I left my automobile out at the road.” He looked close to Ma’s age. “Is your father here?”
“No.”
“Then who’s in charge?”
“Of what?”
“I’m Mr. Meehan from the bank. I’ve brought some papers and things. Whom should I speak with?”
“My ma’s in the house.” Martin pointed past the man with his ax. He watched the city man pick his way through the farmyard, careful to protect his shiny shoes from chicken droppings. Martin was tempted to go to the road and see the automobile. He’d seen a few of the homemade contraptions in Stillwater, but they weren’t common. Last year the newspaper reported there were only about eight thousand autos in the whole country. Pa said there would never be more automobiles than horses. There would always be work for a good farrier.
But remembering that Ma was taking cough syrup that morning, he decided to go to the house. Who exactly was in charge during Pa’s absence? Certainly Ma couldn’t handle much in the way of business now.
Lilly pranced around him at the door, clutching her rag doll. “We have company, Martin. Our first guest. Take off your muddy boots if you’re coming in.”
Martin squinted down at the small girl who lately gave more orders than his mother. Lilly wouldn’t start school until next year. Besides leaving Stillwater and his friends, she was the other trial Martin suffered.
Martin squeezed into an oak ladder-back chair next to Lilly’s place. He studied Mr. Meehan across the table, smelled his barbershop spice.
Aunt Ida poured coffee and set out the last of the sugar cookies. “All my life on a farm,” she complained. “And when I finally get away, I’m brought back to the country in my old age.” She had changed from her gray everyday apron to a fancy embroidered one.
Mr. Meehan was explaining to Ma that there was a loan on the farm. Mr. Meehan called it “a small but pressing mortgage. That’s in addition to annual taxes, mind you. And fees.”
Martin wondered why a banker had such a keen interest in this old place.
“Of course, if you forfeit—ah, that means if you don’t pay the tax—then the bank gets the property.”
Martin’s head shot up. “We know what ‘forfeit’ means.”
Mr. Meehan didn’t ask Martin anything, or even acknowledge his presence. He just talked on and on. Ma occasionally nodded and said “Yes” or “I see.”
“Just this week, three farmers in this area have forfeited.” Meehan ate a cookie the size of a saucer in three bites.
“I see.”
“I’m sure you’ll want to tell your husband I stopped by. There is a Mr. Gunnarsson, isn’t there?”
“Yes, I’ll tell him.”
“Then again, sometimes . . . I can find a buyer for a farm in trouble.”
So he was a land buyer too. Martin pushed a cookie hard with his tongue against the roof of his mouth until the coarse sugar granules felt like sand; then, like always, he sucked milk through his clenched teeth to finish dissolving it.
Mr. Meehan ignored Martin, giving him plenty of time to study the man. “Last week some ruffians shot up Westergaard’s barn. Likely Gypsies.”
Aunt Ida clasped both hands to her flat chest. Martin hadn’t told anyone about Samson and had seen the boy only once since meeting that day underwater. Martin had been on the road, being pestered by those blasted Barker brothers, and Samson, who was riding with several men, looked daggers at the Barkers but only slightly nodded to Martin.
Mr. Meehan went on, very slowly. He was a very polite speaker, even while delivering bad news. He frowned, saying, “Now the Westergaards want out.” Then he smiled. “And they’re in luck. I can sell that place for them.” Meehan stopped smiling and molded his face to match the news he was bearing. Again he directed his comments to Ma: “If it should ever come to that here, that you want to sell the farm, I mean, well, I can help in many ways. Pardon my impertinence, Mrs. Gunnarsson, ah, Martha, ma’am, but ladies such as yourselves deserve the fineries a town has to offer . . . beautiful dresses and such.”
“We’ll be fine, Mr. Meehan.” Ma spoke softly. “My husband won’t be gone much longer.”
Mr. Meehan rested his hand on Lilly’s shoulder, then patted her doll Stella. “This little darling here would have proper friends close by, and your boy here—”
“Martin,” Martin said.
Mr. Meehan went right on, “should have good schools.”
Martin felt like he had two minds. On the one hand, he could dance with happiness that a man had come right out to this godforsaken farm offering to buy the place. On the other hand, he told himself, Whoa, this farm is Pa’s dream. Besides, he didn’t entirely trust the way Mr. Meehan said things. Martin watched the man study Ma’s face. He hadn’t looked at Ma’s blue eyes and creamy skin in a long time. Ma hadn’t inspired much notice lately. Martin was a bit surprised to see how beautiful she was. Under Mr. Meehan’s gaze, a red flush slowly seeped into Ma’s face from her yellow hairline.
Aunt Ida sprang up and quick as a bee sting handed Meehan several letters. “Mr. Meehan, would you please carry these to town to post?”
Martin flushed with fury. Last night, at the small kitchen table, he had written Chet and Stan a complaining letter about the farm, how boring school was, and how he planned to return after they harvested in the fall. Not only was the house so cramped that everyone knew everyone else’s business, but now Aunt Ida had given the letter to Meehan. Martin could have posted it himself somehow in due time. He clenched his teeth so as not to object.
Mr. Meehan nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
“I have to get back to my chopping.” Martin decided to test whether he really needed manners out here. He stood abruptly. “I’ll walk you out,” he announced, adding, “you’ll want to be getting back before dark.” In his side vision Martin saw Lilly shake a finger at his rudeness.
12 July 1864
Mother was lonely until Mister Connor got a new wife. She came today and put mother’s wedding ring on a length of thread. She suspended it over Mother’s belly and after several minutes it started to sway. Mrs. Connor said this means the baby will be a boy. I listened from the loft. The women forgot they sent me there and not outside. The ring was hard to take off, and later did not go back on Mother’s finger. She asked me to think of a safe keeping place. We wrapped it in a quilt square and pushed it between two logs.
I studied it in the sunlight first. It is signed with her father’s metalsmith signature, a small design stamped inside. Mother explained the symbols. There is a crown with a sword that looks like a lightning bolt. It is all tinier than anything I’ve ever seen.
—Cora Gunnarsson, American Citizen
Chapter 7
In the margin Cora had sketched the tiny design. Martin wondered what had become of the ring. He knew from school in Stillwater that Paul Revere had been a silversmith before his famous ride and that silversmiths signed their work with distinct miniature symbols. His text had even shown a sketch of the symbol Revere used.
He indulged in a daydream that his great-grandfather had made a silver horseshoe to send with his daughter to America. Or a gold cup. He smi
led at these fairy-tale images but laid down the diary to have a good look around the place.
Since foreign money would do immigrants no good here, he asked himself what besides jewelry they might have brought over that was made of metal. If you were going to an unsettled land with few blacksmiths, you would need to bring your own necessary tools, like ax heads and saw blades, and you could fashion wooden handles for them once you got here. And if you planned ahead and wanted doors to swing properly, you’d likely pack hinges too, or you would be forced to nail leather straps onto doors as makeshift saggy hinges. Even nails and bolts had been scarce. Many cabins and barns were built without them, laboriously pegged and notched together.
Martin made the rounds of all the buildings. Nothing. The small shed, corncrib, and chicken coop were literally slumping into the earth from disuse.
Aunt Ida had taken Ma and Lilly out back to get up a garden plan. It was a rare thing for him to be alone in the house. Finding the diary with its support for a hidden cache helped him feel less ridiculous as he peered into his parents’ bedroom, then Aunt Ida’s tiny sleeping quarters behind a quilt. He reminded himself that the diary also referred to a doll’s house, which hadn’t survived the last four decades. Still, for the sake of completeness, he explored the tiny loft over the kitchen meant for drying and storing. Even the stove in the house was just a stove. He searched it for a hallmark signature and found nothing but rust and soot. Ma’s flatware and pans were just tin and iron.
He headed to the barn, passing the chopping block. Out of habit, he braced his feet against the armlike roots that radiated from the massive stump. But this time he picked up the ax only to examine its head. Ordinary.
As usual, no matter the time of day, the barn was dark. Mice had long ago removed every useful sprig of straw and hay from the main floor. He cataloged what was still there, everything that contained even a bit of metal. A scattergun barrel—on close inspection he saw that it was stamped with a U.S. patent number. A pitchfork. He inspected the fork’s tines in the waning window light. Nothing. No stamp, no signature, nothing bearing the symbol that Cora had drawn.
He saw it when he left the barn and came back into daylight. The barn door hinges. Old, dark, and triangular. A set of three, heavy and well made. On the left plate of each hinge he could barely discern the familiar crown and thunderbolt, proof that these had been brought by his grandparents with this specific use in mind. He touched the design on two hinges—it matched the sketch in Cora’s diary, but rust had completely destroyed it on the third. Rust wouldn’t happen to gold or silver. He recognized the error in his thinking: precious metals were too soft to serve as utilitarian items. He couldn’t resist rubbing the pad of his forefinger over the tiny engraving and picturing the great-grandfather who’d made this exact hinge—in a different time, a different century, a different country entirely.
Martin pushed back from the dinner table and said, “I’m not sleeping in the kitchen by Lilly anymore. She’s always talking to herself and humming.”
“Maybe it’s you she’s talking to.” Aunt Ida let her words settle a bit. Lately Aunt Ida seemed to be testing Ma, giving her more work to do and drawing her into conversation. “What do you think, Martha?”
“That’s fine.”
But when Martin retrieved the last armful of his belongings, Ma asked, “Martin, where are you going with all that?”
“I’m sleeping in the barn. I told you.”
“Why, dear? What about the chickens?”
“The hayloft, Ma. I’ll be up where it’s clean and dry. Just until we get the hay in and it turns cold again.” Martin looked straight into Ma’s eyes. His gaze was no longer level to hers. He had grown. There was a time when she would have been the one to observe this. She looked back with empty eyes. Did she see Dan in him? Would she ever be Ma again?
Lilly distracted him by saying something over and over. It hit him that Lilly had no friends here either. Ma’s strangeness must be all the harder on a small girl. These months on the farm she’d taken to playing “fancy lady comes visiting” under the back window. From this favorite spot she announced a third time, “Someone’s driving up,” before getting anyone’s attention.
A curious wagon strained up the hill toward the house.
“Is it a notion wagon?” Aunt Ida squinted into the setting sun. “Weather’s fair enough for dry goods sellers.”
But this wasn’t the square wagon with outside drawers that most notion sellers used. There were no pots, pans, and chairs tied to the sides for sale. This vehicle’s rounded top resembled an old covered wagon. A little porch roof extended forward over the seat. Except for the plain brown color, it looked like a Gypsy wagon.
The driver mopped his dusty forehead with a beefy arm. Martin nodded and was about to offer water for him and the horse when a crash rang from the house and a voice shouted, “It’s them Gypsies. Count the chickens. Tie the cow.” Aunt Ida, brandishing a rolling pin like a bayonet, marched out to the edge of the porch. The heels of her shoes smacked the wooden floorboards with each step.
“Come away from there, Martin.” She sounded so angry, Martin looked again to see if she maybe had a gun. Even with no real weapon, Aunt Ida could strike terror in the hearts of ten men with just her voice.
The driver stood and showed his two empty hands. “I assure you ma’am, I am neither a Gypsy nor a ne’er-do-well.” He gestured to the side of the wagon. “As you can see, I am a photographer. There is just enough afternoon light, and I wondered if the family would like to sit for a portrait?”
Aunt Ida descended the steps and marched with her head thrust forward, leading with her spectacles. “That’s a Gypsy wagon,” she pointed accusingly.
The man bowed low. “Very perceptive, madam, and a finer travel accommodation I have never known. Come and see.”
Inside was a brightly decorated miniature home. A bed stretched across its width, behind the wagon seat. The chimney pipe of a small cookstove rose through the roof on the left wall. On the right side were doors and cupboards. Wooden crates of glass bottles, photographic equipment, and tripods were neatly arranged on the floor space in the center.
“I left the inside as it was when I bought it, though I’ve painted the outside to tame it down somewhat.” The man smiled at Aunt Ida. “I’m Axel Stone.”
“This here’s the Gunnarsson place,” Aunt Ida replied. “I’m the missus’s aunt. Ain’t never been this close to a Gypsy wagon before; they’re right clever planned, I’ll grant you that.”
“Allow me to show you my work.” He carefully pulled out a crate of portraits with thin boards packed between each for protection. Martin and Aunt Ida looked at them all. In portraits, families had included a favorite horse or dog or cat. If the homes had a porch, they sat on the stoop with taller members standing beside the steps. Always the house itself was pictured, and if it lacked a porch, the family arranged themselves on straight-backed chairs set in the yard for the occasion. In one photograph of a very large family, a portrait of a young boy was held between two siblings to mark the place he had held in the family before his early death.
Martin wondered what Axel Stone said to ensure that no one ever smiled. Behind the dogs in most pictures was a blurred area where their tails had wagged during the long exposure.
Ma joined the group and studied the portraits over Martin’s shoulder. “They’re lovely, Mr. Stone.” Ma read aloud, “Stone’s Throw Photography,” which was painted like a sunrise on the wagon.
Mr. Stone tipped his hat. “Ma’am,” he said formally, “how about a portrait of your family?”
Ma’s face shut down at the mention of the family.
“We need to paint our house first,” Aunt Ida said.
Mr. Stone tipped his hat. “Another time then.” He settled into the seat and bent toward Aunt Ida. “Ma’am, I’ve heard tell the Gypsies are in and around this area.” He winked, then added, “I don’t know if there’s anything to fear from them, but I assure you, they tu
rn a wagon into a fine home.”
At supper Aunt Ida muttered about barn burnings and horse thieves. She pointed to Lilly with her gnarled index finger and warned, “When Gypsies are in the area, you must be careful. They steal children. They’ll take the laundry right off the line or a plow out of the field at the noonday break.”
Lilly’s eyes grew big as stove lids. In a tiny voice she asked, “How do you know if it’s a Gypsy and not just a person?”
“They’re shiftless people, got no homes, just travel in caravans like Mr. Stone’s wagon. They’re dark-skinned and dress fancy, and they speak their own language. Not natural talk, downright mysterious. Sometimes I think it’s a pity shame God put so many different kinds in this world.”
Martin wondered how many Gypsies his great-aunt had actually met. He had found meeting Samson’s family to be interesting at least. He tried to steer her away from the topic. “Let’s have a sitting when Pa gets back.”
It was Aunt Ida’s night to talk the ear off a mule. “My family didn’t have daguerreotypes when I was a girl. Not even tintypes. Back then an artist went farm to farm and painted a picture of the place. He’d set his chair on a hill where he could see the entire yard.” She gestured wide with her fork, “house, barn, everything. Took half a day. He’d paint it all.”
All evening Martin looked forward to his first night in the barn. He even submitted to a rare game of checkers with Lilly, who was always willing, even though Martin won every time. He strolled out when just enough twilight remained to light the way through the barn’s main floor to the loft where he’d left a lantern. He didn’t bother to light it but lay down on a folded blanket, covered with two quilts, and sighed with joy at being alone.
He thought of Pa returning and all the work that lay ahead. The original chicken coop was gone, and they needed to build another. Of course, there were crops to plant. He imagined their great success as farmers would hasten his return home to Stillwater. Certainly one good year would earn them enough for him to buy a horse. He drifted to sleep picturing a tall chestnut with a black mane and tail.
