Elm Creek Quilts [07] The Sugar Camp Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Is Uncle Jacob here?”

  “No,” said her father. “Didn’t he bring you?”

  “He never arrived. Mr. Nelson brought me home instead.”

  Her parents exchanged a look of puzzlement and joined her in the kitchen. At her father’s request, Dorothea repeated what Uncle Jacob had said regarding the time and place he planned to meet her. “It is unlike my brother to be so late,” said Lorena, turning quickly at the sound of a knock on the door. She hastened to open it, but it was only Mr. Nelson.

  “Is Mr. Kuehner missing?” he asked.

  “Missing or delayed,” said Robert.

  Mr. Nelson addressed Lorena. “You know his habits best. Is it too soon to begin a search?”

  “If it were a temperate night, I would say yes, but because it is so cold …” Lorena shrugged helplessly.

  The men quickly agreed to ride back to Creek’s Crossing. Mr. Nelson would search south of town on the route toward his home while Dorothea’s father inquired at the houses of Uncle Jacob’s few acquaintances. Lorena and Dorothea would search the farm. As the men rode off, Lorena investigated the outbuildings while Dorothea headed for the sugar camp.

  The lantern in her fist swung as she ran, casting stark shadows on the ground. Frozen tufts of grass crackled underfoot; her nostrils prickled and lungs burned from the cold. She began calling for her uncle as soon as the lantern light lit up the shelter and the large log tripods that had once suspended an enormous black kettle over the fire at sugaring time. There was no reply. She reached the shelter, but inside she found only the quilt she had made him, draped clumsily over a wooden bench.

  She searched the forest next, stumbling over tree roots and windfall hickory nuts the squirrels had abandoned. She called for him, but listened in vain for a reply. She then began to search the fields, following the post-and-rail fence that marked the boundary of Uncle Jacob’s property, and met her mother coming from the opposite direction. Her search of the outbuildings had yielded not a single clue as to Uncle Jacob’s whereabouts.

  Their faces and limbs were numb from the cold, their throats aching and hoarse from shouting. Lorena decided that they should return to the house, await word from Robert, and keep the kettle on the fire in anticipation of the men’s return.

  Hours passed with no word. Dorothea and Lorena fell asleep in their chairs beside the fire, bundled in quilts. The first pale pink shafts of dawn were appearing on the horizon when Dorothea’s father returned, haggard and shaking from fatigue. He had found no sign of Uncle Jacob.

  “Perhaps Mr. Nelson—” Dorothea began, but her father interrupted her with a shake of his head. Mr. Nelson, too, had searched all night. They had encountered each other southwest of town; Mr. Nelson suggested they concentrate their search in that region, since the last sighting of Uncle Jacob’s wagon located him heading south, following the road along Elm Creek.

  None of them could imagine what he might have been doing there at that hour. Robert suggested a second, more thorough search of the farm now that daylight had arrived, but Lorena insisted he rest while she and Dorothea combed the grounds once more. He wearily agreed, but when they returned two hours later, they found him in the barn doing the chores.

  “Someone’s got to tend to these animals,” he said before Lorena could scold him. He was right, of course; together they completed the usual morning chores. They forgot about breakfast until it was nearly lunchtime, but when Lorena prepared a meal, none of them could eat more than a mouthful. Dorothea felt sick and apprehensive. Something dreadful had happened, and now all they could do was wait until they discovered what it was. Suddenly an image flashed before her mind’s eye: the fugitive slave, bloated and decaying, being dragged from the reeds along the creek bank.

  She jumped up from her chair. “Someone should go in to town to see if there is any word.”

  Her father nodded, but at that moment, they heard horses coming up the road toward the barn.

  Dorothea reached the door first and dashed outside, the cold wind biting her cheeks and whipping her dress against her legs. She hugged herself for warmth and halted in the middle of the road, shivering, as her parents caught up to her. Her mother drew in a sharp breath, her father murmured something, but Dorothea was insensible to everything but the wagon and riders coming slowly toward them.

  It was Uncle Jacob’s wagon, but an unfamiliar horse pulled it, and the man driving it sat stiffly, shoulders hunched against the wind. Two men on horseback flanked the wagon: Charley Stokey, a scar running the length of his face where Mr. Liggett had cut him with the scythe, and Linus Donne, the county constable. The wagon rolled awkwardly, its front corner smashed, the wheel wobbling uncertainly.

  The men would not meet their gaze as they approached. That and the condition of the wagon told Dorothea that Uncle Jacob was dead.

  THE WAGON HAD been found overturned in Elm Creek, but since the wounds upon Uncle Jacob’s body were merely scratches and bruises, they knew the crash had not killed him. Mr. Donne speculated that Uncle Jacob had been felled by an apoplexy, and, unable to control the horse, he had driven the wagon down the riverbank.

  The accident had occurred in the woods belonging to Mr. Liggett, who had chanced upon the scene earlier that morning. According to Mr. Donne, Mr. Liggett insisted that he had not been expecting a visit from anyone, least of all Uncle Jacob. He had not known that Uncle Jacob was missing or that others had been searching for him. Charley Stokey added that he had seemed less concerned with Uncle Jacob’s death than with figuring out why Uncle Jacob had been on his land. Dorothea and her parents were equally bewildered. The scythe had been returned long ago, and they could think of nothing that would have compelled Uncle Jacob to seek out Mr. Liggett’s company.

  When Mr. Donne and Charley offered their condolences, Lorena took a deep breath and said, “Thank you for your kindness. It was a terrible accident, but we will take comfort in knowing my brother is now in a better place.”

  “An accident.” Mr. Donne’s brow furrowed. He scratched his head and rolled the brim of his slouch hat. “Only one thing bothers me.”

  “What’s that?” asked Robert.

  “Where’s his horse?”

  Charley looked grim. “We should check Liggett’s barn.”

  Donne shook his head. “Now, Charley, I told you. Just because it happened on Liggett’s land don’t make him responsible.”

  Charley absently fingered his scar. “I’m not saying he done it, but maybe he saw a chance to steal a horse whose owner wouldn’t miss it.”

  “This isn’t the time or place to talk about this.”

  “That horse didn’t unhitch itself.”

  Charley’s voice rose, but Mr. Donne cut him off with a low word. Dorothea was numb to the exchange. All she could think of was Uncle Jacob, lying dead on his bed, wrapped in a coarse sheet.

  Mr. Donne asked Dorothea’s father if he could do anything more for the family, but when Robert shook his head, the visitors departed. Alone, the Grangers sat silent and motionless in their chairs.

  Lorena broke the silence with a murmur. “The Lord be praised, we are delivered.”

  “Mother,” exclaimed Dorothea.

  Lorena shot her a frown. “Don’t look at me that way, Dorothea. I do not celebrate your uncle’s death, but I cannot help feeling that a great yoke has been lifted from my shoulders.”

  “We must see to his burial,” said Robert, rising woodenly from his chair. “He would want to be buried on his own land, and he would want prayers said.”

  “Mr. Donne should have taken him to the undertaker’s rather than bringing him here,” remarked Lorena.

  “Perhaps they thought his family would want him,” said Robert, a new sharpness in his voice.

  “All I mean is that the ground is too frozen for you to dig a grave. He will need to be buried in the town cemetery.”

  Privately, Dorothea agreed. Each fall, the undertaker had the grim task of estimating how many citizens of Creek’s Crossing
were likely to perish before the spring thaw. Before the first snow, he would arrange for the corresponding number of graves to be dug, plus a few more in the event of unforeseen dire circumstances. A few years earlier, an outbreak of typhoid fever filled all the prepared graves before January, and the remains of the additional deceased had to be stored in the undertaker’s barn until late March.

  “He would want to be put to rest on his own land with Rebecca and the children,” said Robert more firmly. He took pen and paper from the desk and dashed off a letter, which he handed to Dorothea. “Please take this to the reverend. I’ll get to work on a grave.”

  Dorothea nodded. She was halfway to the barn when the numbness of her hands woke her to the realization that she had left the house without her wraps. She returned inside and threw on her coat and muffler, but as soon as she stepped outside again, she discovered she no longer carried the letter. Her frantic search of the kitchen called her mother to the doorway, but Lorena did not ask what she was doing and it did not occur to Dorothea to explain. She stopped short in the middle of the room, pressed her palms to her head, and squeezed her eyes shut, willing the noise and confusion from her mind. Slipping her hand into her pocket, she grasped the familiar roughness of paper. She withdrew the letter, threw her mother a look of helpless apology, and tucked the page back into her pocket.

  “It will be all right,” said Lorena. “Everything will be all right.”

  Dorothea could not find the words to reply.

  As she rode to the ferry, she tried not to think of how long her parents had waited for Uncle Jacob to die, how often they had all wished him dead. Now that their wishes had been satisfied, she almost thought she could sense her uncle just beyond the range of sight, scowling at her accusingly, as if their anticipation had brought about his death.

  He had probably died from an apoplexy, Mr. Donne had said. He had investigated many scenes of death and understood them more thoroughly than any man should be obliged to. But what, indeed, had happened to the horse?

  There was no visitation. Uncle Jacob would not have appreciated such a gathering in life and would not gain anything from one in death. He was buried beside his wife and sons the next day, with only his closest kin and the minister in attendance. With a pickax Dorothea’s father had hewn a grave in the icy ground within the maple grove not far from the sugar camp, which they surmised must have been his favorite place on the farm. No one wept. Mired in shock and disbelief, Dorothea could not mourn her uncle because she could not believe him truly gone.

  The ceremony was brief, flat and empty despite the minister’s words of comfort. Lorena had suggested that Robert play a hymn on the fiddle after the last prayer, but he had refused, flexing his fingers and rubbing his callused palms together as if unaware that he did so. Although Dorothea longed for the solace of music, she was relieved by her father’s reply. To play hymns at the grave of a man who considered music a frivolity would be to mock him, powerless as he was now to enforce his wishes.

  Dorothea left her parents at the gravesite while Robert covered her uncle’s coffin with earth. Listless, she wandered through the maple grove to the sugar camp, to the sturdy, windowless sugarhouse and the outdoor workspace that had preceded it. A heavy chain still hung from the timber Uncle Jacob had secured between two sturdy oaks and the ring of large stones beneath it remained, but the enormous cast-iron kettle that had once been suspended from the chain over the fire had been stored in the barn for years, ever since Uncle Jacob decided that a series of smaller kettles produced a far superior syrup than one large kettle alone. Why he had left the kettle stand and fire circle in place after building the sugarhouse, Dorothea did not know, unless it was to mislead curious rivals.

  She crossed the camp to the sugarhouse, passing beneath the suspended timber, her fingers brushing the chain, shoes kicking up black soot from the accumulated cinders of seasons past. Since the sugaring season lasted only a few weeks, other farmers made do with crude log shacks, but Uncle Jacob had built a sugaring house large enough for three or four adults to work in relative comfort, protected from the elements, with a loft for storage.

  Each year her father helped Uncle Jacob collect hundreds of gallons of sap, and she and her mother did their part to boil the clear liquid into syrup, but Uncle Jacob alone decided when the work would begin. In mid-February, Uncle Jacob would begin taking careful note of the weather, marking the time of the sunrise, observing if the temperature had risen above freezing during the day before dropping at night, consulting his meticulous notes from previous years. A few days before he thought the sap would begin running, he and Robert would traverse the maple grove, drilling a hole in each trunk, inserting wooden spiles, and hanging buckets beneath the spouts to collect the sap. Uncle Jacob never failed to tap the trees at precisely the right time, though sometimes he chose the last days of February and other years the first weeks of March. He always managed to collect the pure, precious sap in abundance, even in seasons when their neighbors complained of stubborn flows from their trees or woody flavors in the sap.

  Each day the men would empty the buckets into barrels loaded on the wagon and haul the sap to the sugarhouse, where Dorothea and her mother boiled it down in three kettles hung in a row over an open fire, which they were careful to keep burning steadily. As the sap boiled and thickened in one kettle, they would ladle it into the next and replenish the first, holding back their skirts from the flames, wincing when an errant splash of bubbling syrup struck their hands or faces. When the syrup in the last kettle had thickened enough, Dorothea or Lorena would stir and stir as the liquid turned into grains of sugar. Together they would pour the maple sugar into the wooden molds Uncle Jacob had fashioned and then set them aside to harden.

  Occupied though he was with collecting sap, Uncle Jacob still kept a watchful eye on the women’s work, never too busy to remind them to stoke the fire or chide them if their attention seemed to wander from the boiling kettles. And to Dorothea’s chagrin, the time-consuming labor required to boil forty gallons of sap down into a single gallon of syrup did not relieve the women of their ordinary chores. They rose early to fix breakfast and tend the livestock; at midday and late afternoon either Dorothea or her mother would race back to the house to prepare another meal. Often, long after the men had returned from the barn and had gone off wearily to bed, Dorothea and Lorena labored over the housekeeping neglected during the day—the baking, the churning, the never-ending laundry and mending.

  Dorothea’s thoughts went back to the previous year, to a sugaring season when the days dawned sunny and nightfall brought new snow that dusted grassy slopes and underbrush. The lingering pattern of daytime thawing and nighttime freezing had extended the sap run. Uncle Jacob, hardly able to contain his satisfaction, expressed his enthusiasm by working his family harder than ever. Dorothea was alone in the sugarhouse stirring a kettle when her uncle entered, peered at her through the clouds of steam, and inquired as to her mother’s whereabouts.

  Dorothea brushed damp hair back from her forehead, the sweet scent of maple clinging to her skin, her hair, her clothing, and told him Lorena was back at the house preparing dinner. He nodded, but did not depart as she expected. Instead he took the long-handled spoon from her hand and checked the sap in the center kettle, which had thickened and acquired a rich, amber hue. “Some people think I begin my sugaring earlier than most folks because I’m too impatient to wait when there’s work to be done,” he said. “That’s nonsense. I start as soon as the sap runs because the early run of sap is the sweetest. Better sap means better sugar. This syrup is ready to be moved to the next kettle. Quickly, now.”

  Dorothea obeyed without a word, and after the task was done, Uncle Jacob began to ladle boiling sap from the first kettle into the second. “You must care for the trees just as you do the fields and livestock,” he instructed. “Keep the sugarbush thinned. Don’t tap them too young or use more than one spile per tree or tap anything but sugar maple.”

  “The Craigm
iles say they have used red and Norway maple with no discernible difference in taste.”

  “This is not the Craigmile farm. You are my niece and you will do it my way.” He handed her the ladle. “Finish this while I fetch more fresh sap.”

  Dorothea nodded, taking the spoon, wondering why he had chosen that day to share his sugar-making secrets and her as his confidante.

  Uncle Jacob hefted a barrel of fresh sap and poured some into the first kettle. “Some folks can work the land all their lives and never learn a thing from it. You have to tend the sugarbush as you would any crop. Not like Amos Liggett.” He nearly spat the name. “The fool man chops into the tree with an ax to get to the sap instead of drilling a hole. All that does is injure the tree and allow pestilence and infection to ruin the sap in years to come. I’ve seen trees on his land that had six buckets around them collecting the sap that dripped from those hatchet cuts. Six holes on one tree! It’s no wonder his sugar tastes like burnt sand.”

  He had gone on to instruct her in the proper carving of a spile from a branch of sumac, but Dorothea had not paid as much attention as she would have had she known he would not see another sugaring season. At the time she had wondered, idly, how her uncle had come to discover how Mr. Liggett’s sugar tasted, since they never traded work and were definitely not friends. Now, a new realization struck her: Uncle Jacob must have observed Mr. Liggett’s trees firsthand in order to know such specific details of his sugaring methods. Evidently the night of his death was not Uncle Jacob’s only occasion to visit Elm Creek Farm.

  Troubled, Dorothea swung open the door to the sugarhouse and stepped inside. Uncle Jacob’s tools lay in their proper places, exactly where he had left them. Dorothea tried to imagine sugaring without him, but her mind’s eye refused to form the pictures.