The Purchase (7 page)

That morning, having walked the perimeter of his land with the two surveyors – Hiram Craig and Benjamin Sharpe – he went to talk to Frederick Jones, who had come to this country with the name Jonas Frederick. Why had he twisted his name in such a fashion? It had been reported to him by Hiram Craig,
who said that the German was a benefactor who had single-handedly created the town.

Daniel found the settler’s wife at her hearth, making potato soup. It was her specialty, she told him, but when Daniel slanted himself through the door without removing his hat, she looked at him in the way of a woman who is surprised by a neighbour’s lack of courtesy. Should he explain that a Quaker does not remove his hat because all persons are equal and a show of such shallow respect creates a society of hierarchy? He stood in the doorway, framed by it. He was out of his depth in this kitchen, unfamiliar with the ways of farm wives. In his Quaker way, he would have addressed her by her given and family names, but he did not know her given name and she would find it impertinent of him to ask.

“I was surveyed today,” he said.

“Mister Jones is out to his barn,” said the wife in her accent.

Daniel put his hand over his heart meaningfully. He nodded.

“You are to building a house,” she said.

“Aye. But I am not a young man anymore to be doing such a thing.”

“We are such a pioneer,” said the missus. “Even in the capital there is a new house being now built.”

“Yes, for the president.” Daniel laughed agreeably. The farm wife was making an effort. He said, “I see a plenitude of fine, large stones by your rapids.”
Your
rapids. Daniel was mastering the English, just as she was.

“You have some interest in rock?” The farm wife stirred her soup. She said her husband, who owned one hundred and thirty acres, had given away half of them to the township. “It will be named for him,” she said. “Jonesville.” Her mouth spread wide in a smile, showing places without teeth.

Daniel stood with the door still framing him.

“Did you meet Wiley, who is the son?” She looked at her walls and chairs and dishes as if they had all been created for this single offspring, and to deprive him of the boulders at the rapids would be to rob him of his inheritance.

Daniel felt the rebuke. “I have not had that pleasure.” On the ground behind him, he heard scuffling steps.

“Ha!” Frederick Jones was surprised to find Daniel in his kitchen but he put out his hand. Then he asked a question in order to make his neighbour feel welcome. Did Mister Dickinson know about sprung legs on a young mare?

Daniel said his own mare was lame and that his wife had been treating the leg with rags soaked in lamp oil. “I will admit that Mulberry is still lame,” he said, shrugging affably. “And that my wife has never owned a horse nor ridden one to my knowledge.”

“Lamp oil,” said Frederick Jones.

Daniel said that he had it in mind to build a chimney. “There are stones of good size in heaps around the rapids,” he said, eyeing the farmer’s wife.

“Needed for a mill. What my son is to build. He has already sixteen years.” He looked at his wife.

Daniel mentioned his second warrant, in exchange for which he might have the bit of land and some much needed cash in which event he would build a grist mill. “There are stones enough for both,” he told his neighbour, adding that he would build the mill once the house was roofed, and he would hire young Wiley to operate it, which would be to everyone’s advantage.

Jones said, “Warrant means only paper. So pay me up fifty dollars. And then build a mill.” He was glad to have a neighbour settle and glad to have his son relieved of constructing a mill he had not the aptitude to build. The deed was drawn up in town before Daniel could change his mind.

B
y the end of the month, the shape of the future was marked out on the snowy ground: a dwelling of twelve by fifteen feet that could be extended, amplified, increased at some later date. Every morning Simus took lame Mulberry down to the timber lot for another log to fit against the log below it. In the afternoons he hauled stones from the rapids Daniel had bought. Daniel’s stones. Daniel’s water. Daniel’s house. The nights were cold but the snow melted in the afternoons so that the low parts of the timber lot were soggy and the boy had to struggle through mush and mud.

One morning, he went earlier than usual to the timber lot, hoping that the ground would still be hard. He chose one of his felled trees and hitched it by use of long hemp lines to the horse. This animal he never called by name, any more than he called any person by name, but he kept up a steady stream of wordless sound, which calmed her. The hitching was slow and the way back to the house site was through the marsh. Mule. Mule, he thought to himself and shook his head, just then losing his footing as the horse tugged and the great log she was dragging knocked him off his feet and rolled over his leg. It took a split second, nothing even to count.

For a while in the cold marsh mud he felt only surprise. Winded, he turned his head and looked at his leg and saw
something growing out of it. What came from his mouth then were sounds so piercing that the horse heaved forward and he let go of her lines.

Daniel was looking at his manual. The boy had not arrived with his log so he also took a moment to look up at the sky his shingled roof would soon interrupt. The clouds were galloping along as if they had somewhere to go. Below them a hawk was circling. There was no sign of the boy. Daniel thought of Miss Patch, who would speed up the work when he got her from the auctioneer except that he had not earned the two hundred dollars and he owed fifty more to his neighbour for the acre of stones at the rapids. House building would have to continue at this slow pace and Miss Patch would have to suffer a little longer with the auctioneer.

While Daniel considered this, Mary was bent over the outside fire, stirring and wiping her apron across her face. Simus had snared a rabbit the day before and he’d skinned it and cut it up for her to cook in the iron pot, promising to show her how to skin any animal she could catch. He was going to show her how to make a snare because he didn’t mind that she was a girl. If her father would allow it, she would learn these skills down in the timber lot, which was where Simus was always working – watching, darting, and finding things to eat even under a thin covering of snow or ice. She put the long-handled spoon down and went back in the bushes to relieve herself because her father hadn’t built a latrine. Her father said there were more important things to build but she knew what her mother would have said. Mary pulled up her skirt and squatted down and closed her eyes. She pictured her mother in her camisole dress with the silk collar that matched her cap. She listened to the sound of her
water hitting cold ground and making steam. When she smelled the mix of urine and snow and dirt, she put her nose to her wrist and tried to remember the smell of Luveen. Something between spicy and sweet it was and hadn’t they had a perfect bond, the two of them? Hadn’t they understood each other even without speaking words? When her papa was away all day at his work and her mama was reading or sewing or resting, she and Luveen had performed like a perfect team, taking care of the littler children with never a sour word. Or so it seemed now. Mary chose to forget the small infractions she had sometimes made against Luveen’s rules and the sullen acts of rebellion. What she remembered was the perfection of her former life and the arrival of Ruth Boyd, who had ruined it, wiggling herself into the family from the very first and making her mother die of sorrow. Standing up and adjusting the skirt she was outgrowing, Mary thought, if only I had saved my mama, Ruth Boyd would be back at the almshouse where she belongs and I would still be in Brandywine with Taylor Corbett and Caroline Corbett and Stella George and my other classmates. I would still be with Luveen, who let me bake pastries. When Mary turned and saw Mulberry gnawing on the frozen grass, hitched to a round log from the timber lot, she stood staring for a minute, then screamed, “Papa!” and hiked up her skirt and ran to the place where Daniel was measuring the sky. “Mulberry’s in her hitch without Simus.” It came out in a rush.

It was another half-hour before they found the boy shivering with shock, unable to drag himself even an inch because of his terror at the sight of the bone sticking out of his leg. What he was doing was throwing curses at a circling bird, come as malign spirit, flapping and gloating.

“Poor Simus,” cried Mary, letting herself down in the mud to hold his head in her lap while Daniel stood gaping.

“Run quick to Jester Fox,” Daniel said because on foot, by crossing the frozen creek, she would get there sooner than if she went out to the road and ran to find Frederick Jones. “Hurry, child! Just cross the creek where the ice is thick and you’ll see a frame house.” White stars or flecks of bones were swimming in Daniel’s eyes and he lowered his head and took deep breaths while Mary squeezed the boy’s hand and told him to be brave and then ran off, skirting the boggy ground as Simus and the horse should have done. “Please, God, let Jester Fox be home. Please save Simus and I will be nice to Ruth Boyd.” Mary ran through trees, and when she got to the creek she skated across without falling. She was saving Simus. Saving Simus, who was pleasant to her even though her papa had made him a slave. “Please fetch us a rabbit for dinner,” she’d tell him and he would go loping off although she had never seen him take an order from Ruth Boyd. A few days ago, he had made her an embroidery hoop and he said he would show her how to dye coloured threads. “Please, God, don’t let his leg come off.” She made up an incantation as she ran: “Save Simus save Simus save Simus.” She felt bolder than she had ever felt.

Jester Fox was in his field with two workers. When he heard Mary yelling and saw her streaking across the stubbled stalks, he met her halfway, his face as red as his hair and covered in sweat that continued on into his curly beard and down his thick neck.

“I am Mary Amelia Dickinson and there is a bone coming out of Simus!” Mary gasped, taking firm hold of the neighbour man’s jacket. Her face, too, was running with sweat but also with tears now that she heard what she was saying. In a minute, even her braids were salty and soaked.

Jester Fox nodded. “You run on up the house and get my girl, Bett. She can heal a stone.”

Mary ran. She passed an outbuilding, not quite a barn. There were chickens in a coop, one cow, and two pigs. There was a lamb behind a fence and there was a redheaded boy carrying a pail.

From a distance, Jester Fox yelled, “Tell Bett to take her healin bag!”

When Mary reached the house with its two glass windows, she knocked on the door and waited on the porch. It had a steamy feel to it, she thought, until she felt that it was her skin that was steaming, and her breath. “I am Mary Amelia Dickinson,” she blurted when the door was opened. “Will you come with me because there’s bone sticking out of a leg at our place?”

Bett was darker by a shade than Onesimus, who was dark as night. Her wide-set eyes assessed Mary in an instant and she turned into the kitchen and came back with a large cloth bag, her dress covered by an apron, her hair by a handkerchief. Mary was pumping her knees, practically jumping up and down with impatience, and she reached for Bett’s hand. It was a mile and a half they had to run and they stayed close together, their feet striking the wet earth in similar black boots, left right left in the same rhythm. Saving Simus saving Simus.

The two running girls ran on into the field and beyond it through prickly bushes that snapped at their arms and legs. They did not stop to speak to Bett’s master or the field workers, who were also slaves. Their feet pounded at the ground. They slid across the creek and ran on through the mud that was stickier now than it had been and sucked at their boots but they pulled them up and out and kept on running, running. Mary was panting but she did not hear Bett take in or let out breath. Her legs ached. Her shoes were too tight. One braid had come loose. She did not stop until Bett was crouched over Simus with a curled-down look on her face.

Both Daniel and the wounded boy looked at her in surprise. “But where is Jester Fox?” asked Daniel.

“Papa, this is Bett and she can heal a stone.”

The boy did not move, but the cries he now made sounded animal strange.

Bett looked hard at the leg. She moved her hands just above it, then took a broken shoe off his foot and rolled him gently onto his side. By the time he finished screaming, she had cleaned the bone splinters out of the gash, tucked the bone inside its torn covering of skin, closed the opening using careful fingers, and asked for clean water from the creek. With that she began to make a clay paste out of the mud they were sitting in. She sent Mary for two pieces of wood that were thin and straight and commenced to humming in order to calm her patient.