The Last Runaway

by Tracy Chevalier

  Judith wore a dark gray dress and a flat white bonnet firmly tied with white ribbon. Despite the heat, she did not sweat. Like Dorcas, her shoulders were not sloped as was the fashion of the day, but were almost as square as a man’s, her arms bulging with muscles developed from a lifetime of milking cows. Her mouth was in its perpetual half-smile that Honor now understood held little warmth. “Thee and Adam must come over after dinner,” she said. “We have much to discuss.”

  Honor nodded, noting that Judith had avoided inviting them for a meal. It was just as well, for she did not think she could swallow in the older woman’s presence.

  * * *

  It seemed what Judith Haymaker most wanted to discuss was quilts.

  Honor had been to the Haymaker farm several times with Abigail to buy milk, and to the frolic a couple of weeks before. But she had not inspected it then with an eye to living there. As she and Adam walked along the track from Faithwell west toward the farm, each step took her farther from the cleared village and closer to wilderness. As they approached the farm, she looked at it anew. It was very different from Dorset farms, which, being older, had sunk into their natural surroundings, while Ohio farms had been boldly hacked out and stood perched on the surface of the landscape. The buildings were laid out carefully rather than higgledy-piggledy, and made of wood rather than stone, the boundaries lined with rail fences rather than stone walls, the whole of it surrounded by thick woods rather than manageable green meadows and hills and small clumps of trees. The two-story clapboard house was set back from the road, and the front yard had some lawn—an unusual feature here, as it required clearing every stump, diligent watering and a dog good at keeping away the rabbits and deer. They had one: Digger, a clever English shepherd who ran at them now, snarling and barking as he had never done when Honor came for milk. He seemed to sense that this visit had a different, more ambivalent purpose. Behind the house were various outbuildings, dominated by an enormous barn, much bigger than the house, painted red but now faded, and with a steeply sloping roof and a bank of earth built up to its entrance. The doors were open, and Honor could see hay in bales piled almost to the rafters.

  The Haymakers waited for them on the front porch. Judith Haymaker held a Bible in her lap, Dorcas a shirt she was mending, and Jack sat with his eyes closed—though he jumped up to call off the dog. While Dorcas went inside, Judith ushered them to straight-back chairs before reseating herself in a rocking chair Honor suspected no one was to use but her—the first of many Haymaker rules she was going to have to learn. Digger sat near her, just out of reach of the chair’s runners. He was clearly Judith’s dog; Honor knew he would never come and lie at her feet. Perhaps she would have more luck with the calico cat slinking across the lawn and disappearing into the flower beds laid out on either side of the porch steps. It looked much wilder than her English cat.

  Adam and Jack talked briefly about the oats and when the crop would be harvested, about business at Adam’s store, about a new slave law Congress was debating that Caleb Wilson the blacksmith had spoken of at Meeting. Honor wanted to listen but she was too nervous to pay much attention. She had brought with her some patchwork, and got out the brown and green hexagons she had already been working on. As she began to whipstitch them together into a rosette, the familiar gesture calmed her. Wherever she was, however foreign and awkward the place and the people, sewing at least felt familiar.

  Judith glanced at Honor’s quick, even work. “Such intricate patchwork will take some time,” she remarked. “Does thee never do appliqué? It goes much faster. Even pieced blocks in patterns like Shoo Fly or Flying Geese or Ohio Star would be quicker than what thee is making.”

  “In England we have always made patchwork like this.”

  “Thee is not in England any longer.”

  Honor bowed her head.

  When Dorcas brought out a pitcher of water and glasses, Judith stopped rocking and the men broke off their conversation. “I would like to know what Honor brings to this marriage,” she announced as her daughter began to pour out the water.

  There was a silence apart from Dorcas clinking the pitcher against a glass.

  “She brings very little, Judith,” Adam replied. “Thee knows her circumstances. Honor has never presented herself to be more than she is.”

  “I know that. But does she bring anything at all? Quilts, for example.” Judith turned to Honor. “How many comforts does thee have ready?”

  “One.”

  “One?” Judith was aghast. “I had been led to believe thee is an expert quilter. I saw thy stitching at the frolic. Look how fast thee works now.” She leaned across and took up Honor’s hexagons. “Thee has the best hand in Faithwell. What has thee been doing back in England?” Behind that question Honor could hear other unvoiced ones: How did a rope merchant’s daughter spend her time? Was she lazy? How would she be useful to the Haymakers?

  “I did have more quilts,” Honor explained, “but I gave them away, as they would be too unwieldy for the journey. Grace and I only brought two with us, and Grace’s marriage quilt had to be burned, as there was worry it could be infected with yellow fever.” She looked down, ashamed that she had no quilts to be married with. Marriage had not been her expectation, at least not so soon, and she was unprepared. She should count herself lucky that Jack wanted her anyway.

  “Did thy sister not bring more quilts with her for her marriage to Adam?”

  “She was not concerned about the quilts, and thought she could make them once she got here.”

  Judith grunted and handed back her patchwork. “Thee must ask for thy quilts back from England. Write and explain the circumstances, ask that the comforts be sent. It will take several months, but at least thee will have them. How many can thee get back?”

  Honor hesitated—it seemed rude to ask for quilts she had willingly given away. She tried to think of who would be least offended. “Three, perhaps.”

  “I do not know what the traditions are in England,” Judith said, “but here young women should have a dozen quilts ready for marriage, and a thirteenth made, a whole-cloth one in white. Perhaps Abigail and Adam did not tell thee, as theirs is a second marriage, where the tradition is different. Now, if thee can provide the white material,” she directed at Adam, “we will hold a frolic later this week to quilt it. We are busy now with crops, but we will simply have to make the time. And we will give thee three of Dorcas’s comforts—with the quilts sent from England that will make eight.”

  Dorcas clattered the pitcher onto the table with a stifled cry, red dots coloring her cheeks.

  “Of course I will provide the material,” Adam agreed. “I thank thee for accepting Honor into thy family. If the quilts are a problem, perhaps there is no need to rush into the marriage. Honor can remain with us while she makes the quilts she needs.” He did not sound confident in this suggestion, however.

  “That would take far too long, if the quality is to be good,” Judith Haymaker replied. “To make five good quilts—”

  “Eight!” Dorcas interrupted. “Three to replace mine.”

  “Eight quilts, she would need two years, with us helping.”

  Adam looked startled, clearly unaware of the work involved in quilting. Though he dealt in cloth, he had not grown up around sisters making quilts.

  “Though if she would make appliqué rather than patchwork, it would go faster.” Judith gestured at Honor’s diamonds. “It is time to put those away and take up Ohio patterns.”

  Honor stopped sewing and laid her hands in her lap. It was not a great hardship to set aside the hexagons, and she could make appliqué quilts if needed. But she had always assumed that when the time came to make her marriage quilt, she would have plenty of time to design it and oversee the quilting, even if as the bride she was not meant to work on it herself. She would have chosen one or two hands to do it, and had them quilt carefully. At the frolic Judith would organize, however, many hands would quilt it, with varying degrees of skill. At least a pat
chwork design hid bad stitching; on a whole-cloth quilt of one color the stitching was everything, and the unevenness of the different hands helping would show. She and Jack would begin their married life under a quilt of dubious quality. It was not an auspicious start.

  I must not cry, she thought. I will not cry. To keep the tears from spilling over, she gazed out into the front yard for distraction. Then she noticed a tiny form hovering around the morning glory that twined up the porch columns. Honor blinked. It was a minute bird, almost a bee but with a needle beak, moving its wings so fast she couldn’t see them. As she watched, it inserted its beak to draw out the flower’s nectar.

  Jack followed her gaze. “That is a hummingbird,” he said. “Has thee ever seen one, or is it another thing England does not have, like lightning bugs?”

  Honor shook her head, the movement sending the bird away, though it soon returned. “I have never seen one.”

  “We have brought in two crops of hay,” Judith continued, frowning at the interruption, “and we will get in one more this summer. The oats are ready, and then the corn, and there is all the kitchen garden to put up. We are not expecting Honor to work in the fields, but she can cook and look after the garden and milk the cows and sell cheese. It is always a difficult time of year, with just three of us. With four we can manage more easily. If Honor is to be of any help to us, she and Jack must marry as soon as possible.” She shook her head. “But eight quilts for a wedding. I’ve never heard the likes.”

  Honor noted that Jack said nothing about the quilts, but allowed his mother to negotiate; perhaps he felt he had already played his part in the cornfield. However, when his mother had finished, he took them around the farm, eager to show off what the Haymakers had built up. It was then that Honor truly began to understand how much her life was about to change. At Abigail and Adam’s at least there were other houses within sight, and the general store—basic as it was—was nearby. The Haymakers’ was only a quarter-mile beyond Faithwell, but the road had turned into a rutted track by then and the farm felt remote. And though it had been cleared so that there were front and back yards, a kitchen garden, an orchard and a pasture for the cows, there was still a sense that the wilderness was close at hand, pushing in on the farm from all sides, particularly the woods to the west where she and Belle had stopped before. Honor had always thought she loved trees, but now the beech woods her brothers had climbed in, the apple orchard behind their house, the horse chestnuts they collected conkers from each autumn, all seemed tame next to the bur oaks and black ash and beeches and maples that made up the woods by the farm. “Wieland Woods,” Jack called it. “Named for my father.” When Honor looked questioningly at him, he added, “He died in North Carolina. Fire.”

  She did not ask for details: Jack’s face had shut down.

  Almost as worrying as the press of the trees were the animals. The Brights had kept eight chickens for eggs, and bought everything else they needed from the town butcher and dairy. The Haymakers had eighty chickens: twenty layers and sixty pullets for eating. There were two horses, two oxen they shared with another farm, eight cows (“We are adding a cow a year,” Jack explained proudly), and four pigs, huge and so smelly her stomach turned. Indeed, the whole farm smelled of raw animal; she could not imagine living with such a pervasive odor. But Jack had Honor and Adam inspect every animal. As they went around, Adam was polite and seemed genuinely interested, while Honor felt only a growing dread. She could never be proud of a cow. In Bridport she had lived far from barns, and close to the shops that did the selling. Here she would be at the heart of the making. It was a very different life, full of alien smells and sounds and textures and spaces. Seeing Jack in his home made him more of a stranger; she would have to grow used to him too.

  The only place on the farm where she felt any ease was in the haymow. There the hay’s sweet, dry, dusty scent masked the stench of piss and manure, and it was quiet, with the animals in the stalls below and the people going about their work. Here she could imagine coming to escape the rest of the farm for a few minutes. New bales from the recent harvest were stacked high. Only the straw in one corner was low. “When we are harvesting the oats, we will replenish the straw,” Jack reassured Honor and Adam. Honor picked up a strand—dull and dead compared to the hay, its life cut off when the seeds were threshed from it.

  The house was a little more familiar, since Honor had now been in enough American houses to expect square rooms with large windows, plain furniture made of ash and pine and elm, and oval rag rugs laid on the floor. Judith led them through each room, including the pantry and the cooler cheese-making room off the kitchen. Honor was surprised when she then led them upstairs and showed them each bedroom, plainly furnished but for the red and green and white quilts on each bed. Honor was not expecting to see bedrooms—at home she would never have showed strangers the bedrooms, which she considered private. She glanced at Adam, but he did not raise his eyebrows. In Pennsylvania the families she stayed with had also showed her each room, as if to give her a clear idea of how they lived and what they possessed. In England it would be considered showing off, but here such things were natural and important. Besides, the bedrooms were no longer private to her, she reminded herself, for she was joining the family. Somehow she would have to think of this house as home.

  Faithwell, Ohio

  8th Month 4th 1850

  My dear family,

  I am writing to tell you that I am to be married this morning, to Jack Haymaker. We will live with his mother and sister on their dairy farm just outside of Faithwell.

  This is very sudden, I know, but I hope you will give us your blessing and think fondly of us.

  Please if thee could, Mother, ask for the Star of Bethlehem quilt back from Biddy and send it, along with those I gave to William and Aunt Rachel. I need them here. I am sorry to have to ask, but it is required of me by my husband’s family to have in possession a sufficient number of quilts when married. I hope thee and the others will understand.

  Your loving daughter,

  Honor Bright

  Fever

  HONOR DID NOT spend her first married night in Jack Haymaker’s bed. Their bed, as she would have to learn to think of it. After the marriage Meeting and a community feast hosted by the Haymakers, when the last neighbors had left and the sky was finally turning to ink, Jack led her upstairs and down the hall to their bedroom. “This will be more comfortable than the cornfield,” he said, smiling as he brought her to the bed. It was spread with the whole-cloth white quilt made at the frolic earlier that week—quickly and unevenly quilted by whoever could be spared. Honor held on to the iron bedstead to keep from swaying.

  Jack removed his braces—“suspenders,” she must call them—and his shirt before noticing that she had not moved. “Will thee get undressed? Here, I’ll help thee.” Reaching over to unfasten the buttons that ran down her back, he let his hand rest on her neck for a moment, then frowned. “But thee is hot!” Jack turned her around and took in her flushed face, then made her sit while he felt her cheeks and forehead. “When did thee begin to feel like this?”

  “I—’tis a hot night.” And it was—so stifling and still that Honor’s hot brow had seemed to her simply an extension of the weather. Jack called for his mother and sister, and Honor, having held herself together all afternoon, let herself slump on the bed.

  Judith and Dorcas led her back downstairs and settled her in the sick room off the kitchen, a small, square room containing a single bed, a wooden chair, and a basin and pitcher set into a cabinet with a chamber pot inside. Above the cabinet a medicine closet hung on the wall, filled with strips of linen and bottles of camphor, mustard and other medicines unfamiliar to Honor. The bed was made up with old linen sheets and a gray wool blanket that she found unbearably scratchy. A window faced onto the backyard. The women left it open and the door to the kitchen ajar so that some air could circulate, though little did and it was very close.

  For the first few days of her fever H
onor swung between hot and cold, delirium and lucidity, a desire to have the Haymakers with her and a longing for them to leave her alone. Sometimes she pretended to be asleep when Dorcas looked in on her or Jack sat by her bed. Conversation—either speaking or listening—was too draining, particularly when she barely knew them. She had not yet built up the hours of talk about the weather, the cows, the chores, how well she had slept, the neighbors’ comings and goings, the milk souring in the heat, wonder over letters from relatives and friends. When Jack sat with her or Judith Haymaker spooned broth into her mouth or Dorcas hung in the doorway, they too seemed at a loss as to what to say, and often resorted to talking to each other, or rinsing the chamber pot when it didn’t need it, smoothing the sheets, opening or shutting the window, sweeping the clean floorboards.

  Alone Honor lay and watched the light change on the walls, too weak and dazed to sit up and read or sew. At times the room was so hot she felt she and the air had lost any boundary between them and become one. Even in her delirium she knew this was nonsense, and then she welcomed the intrusion of a Haymaker or, once or twice, Adam, to remind her of who and where she was.

  Apart from her seasickness on the Adventurer, she had never been so severely ill for so long. She was in bed a week before she could sit up, and another week before she could get out of bed even briefly.

  Though the Haymakers were attentive in looking after her, they did not seem alarmed by the length or severity of her illness. “It’s ague,” Judith Haymaker replied when Honor wondered why she was not yet better. “It likes to settle in for a long visit. Everyone gets it.”

  Her illness overlapped with the harvesting of the oats, though she was well enough by then that all the Haymakers could leave her to go to the fields, as every hand was needed. Honor regretted not taking part, as she had hoped it would help her to feel more a part of the farming community. She said as much to Jack when he came to see her briefly after the first day of the harvest. “There will be other years,” he said, and then fell asleep in the chair.