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.
Indenture: Feb 10 1799 Frederick Jones to Daniel dickinson for $50 to be paid out for the lot lying on both sides of Saw Mill Creek (a part of the tract whereon said Jones now lives) also a lain one rood wide for use by Jester Fox beginning at a stake in a road by head of Jones’s spring thense 65 feet and 22 poles crossing the creek to a white oak.
By 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.
Daniel had pulled himself up on his wobbly feet. He had been on his knees, quite unnoticed in the crisis of setting the leg, and he had watched Bett’s skill with astonishment. While he stood over Simus, Mary carefully moved the boy’s head onto a pillow of leaves and ran all the way back to the house site before Daniel could blink. She took up a thin piece of oak that had been hewn and set aside for pegs all the while feeling she was breathing a stranger’s breath, watching what happened around her through a stranger’s eyes.
In the clearing, Bett drew a flat bandage from her bag. It had been cut into tails on both sides and these she lapped across the front of the leg. Next, the clay paste and finally, when Mary came back, the splints. These were tied with straps while Mary held the boy’s head in her lap again and brushed her fingers across his closed eyelids.
Daniel’s plan was to get the boy up to the house site, where he could be kept dry and fed, but Bett said firmly that it mustn’t be that way. “His leg must just set now, sir, for a number of days without jostling. Best put up a shelter,” she instructed while she rummaged in her bag and then brought out a tin full of powder and a bottle that gave off a smell when she loosened its cork. She mixed powder and liquid in a tiny tin cup from her bag and told Simus to swallow it. “All up.”
Daniel went back to the house site while Mary marched through the timber lot looking for pieces of wood. All around were the sounds of the forest, for the sun was angled and the trees were hospitable to living things. They were alive now with almost returning spring, and the boy who was going to help build a house for them was lying in the timber lot and she had found him and saved him and her heart was light.
Daniel looked at his hands as if anything they touched would break. He knew a moment of self-pity but swallowed it back. Since Rebecca had gone … had died … had disappeared into her grave … nothing, ever … He was sorry to be thinking of the two hundred and fifty dollars he needed and the house to be built instead of the injured boy and his pain. He was sorry to be thinking of his unsheltered children who would lack a house as well as a mother here in Virginia when there was a boy lying on icy cold ground down in the timber lot with a shattered leg. He was sorry he had come to Virginia, although what choice did he have? The Elders had drawn the new map of his ruined life when an unschooled Methodist girl had offered the only help in sight. “What do we do now?” she asked him as he sat with his head in his hands, but it was that part of afternoon when birds and animals and men have nothing to say.
“Read to me from the manual,” Ruth told him, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear and picking up the axe. “Tell me how to start.”
“You cannot build a house, Ruth Boyd.”
“You will have the good of four hands and one head.”
“You don’t credit yourself with a brain?”
“I didn’t name whose head, did I?” Ruth looked at the bare ground where their boots – two large and two small – were moored side by side. Her stockings were torn inside her boots and there was skin visible, but she tucked her feet ba
ck and watched a beetle crawl up the pile of thin rocks that held the house frame. She thought what a long way it was for the beetle and yet to her it was nothing. She thought then that there was no one single truth, even in size. Daniel handed her the book. She said, “You read while I cut notches.”
“Only to cut off your hand.”
“Or my nose to spite my face.” Ruth laughed a little and even nudged him gently.
Daniel began with the words that described the hewing of notches. He said she could try to do that while he went to check on the boy. Ruth did not like the boy and would not venture close to him. Ruth picked up the axe, which was not very big, and Daniel went to the clearing, where he found Mary and Simus squeezed inside a shelter of sticks. “Mary Amelia, what business has thee … have you … down here? Take yourself up to the house this minute!”
“We have no house,” said Mary. “Not anymore.”
Daniel kicked at the flimsy shelter and the boy covered his head with an arm while the sticks came tumbling down on him and Mary scrambled out of the way. “I gathered all of that,” she said crossly.
Daniel thought for just a moment. “And who do you suppose is looking after your little brothers and your sister? Where is Jemima just now, and that rascal Benjamin? It is your job to keep track of them all. The boys are to keep the fire and you must watch them to be sure they manage. They are not … country lads … after all.” He was watching Mary and, out of the side of one eye, seeing the boy on the ground surrounded by sticks. This was no place for his Mary to be loitering. He turned to look straight at Simus, who was staring up at him, frightened. “Isaac is to gather the wood …” Daniel muttered, feeling sorry he had frightened the boy and a little ashamed of himself. “Benjamin, the kindling …” his words trailed off.
Mary got up, brushed twigs and sticks off her dress, and began walking away without a glance back. Always, he left her in charge of the others, and she continually failed to satisfy him. Now she would not let him see that she felt the sting of his words. She would not remind him of the way she had run to the Fox place to save a boy who was lying alone on the dirt with a leg snapped off. In order to show that she would never hurry – not for little children who were healthy and fine when here was a boy who had nearly died – her walk was slow and indignant, almost a trudge. Nobody to look after poor Simus and his brother lost forever to a Tennessee slave trader while he was stuck in the frightening woods like bait and where was Ruth Boyd? Wasn’t she hired to look after the little ones? Wasn’t she the reason they had come to this nasty place where boys were made into slaves?
The Purchase Page 5