“It’s a good place, Jonathan,” she said, after a long time. “It’s a mighty good place.”
Jonathan’s face lighted up with pleasure, as if he had known Bertha had a right to carp and carry on if she took a mind to. But her mammy, Stephanie guessed, must be seeing more than lay before her eyes. She had the de Monchard knack of making something out of nothing. Apt as not, in her mind she was building a fine house on the edge of that tangled thicket like the house of the circuit judge in Hillsborough. She was clearing fields as far as the eye would be able to see when all the trees were cut down, planting long rows of corn in the hollers, and pasturing sheep on sunny, grassy hillsides. She was hacking out a road past the house. She was having kinfolks come to Sunday dinner.
“I’m powerful glad you favor hit, Berthy,” said Jonathan.
“I been all up and down this river,” spoke up the deputy, “and you can take my word for it. Ain’t nobody got a finer claim in Kentucky County than this right here.”
“Well.” announced Jonathan brusquely, “time’s a-flyin’. I’ll help the deputy with the surveyin’. Ought to get that out of the way first.”
“Can I help, too?” begged Rob.
“I could sure make use of a boy like you to help with the tallyin’,” said the deputy to Rob.
“If hit makes the surveyin’ go quicker,” considered Jonathan, “all right, Rob. Noel.…”
Jonathan looked out over his wild clearing, then at the creels into which were crammed the tools for taming it. He drew a long breath.
“Noel, you begin makin’ handles,” he said. “Better shape up the grubbin’ hoe first. Then Steffy can begin choppin’ out the bushes while your mammy gets her bearin’s an’ sets up housekeepin’. Begin cuttin’ down them girdled trees, Noel. A cabin’ll have to wait a spell, I reckon, till we get the land cleared an’ corn in the ground. We been sleepin’ under the stars a long time now. I reckon we can sleep that way a few nights more ’thout harm overtakin’ us.”
The deputy started down the wooded slope toward the spring, Rob, glad to be let off from chopping and grubbing, traipsing after him, Jonathan following Rob.
“Willie,” Jonathan called back, “you stir your stumps, too. Soon as Noel gets a handle in the goose neck hoe, you start choppin’ weeds and sprouts. Some things may be scarce in Kentucky,” he added, “but one of ’em ain’t choppin’.”
Stephanie wished her pappy had picked Noel to help with the surveying. Noel looked at the deputy’s instruments out of hungry eyes that would have been hungrier still had he but heard the deputy’s flow of talk all the way from the Fort. She imagined the questions with which Noel would surely have plied the deputy could Jonathan have seen fit to send him instead of Rob tramping about the Venable claim, carrying the chains, studying the compass, sticking tally pins in the ground, scribing signs and initials on beech trees, marking witness corners.
As soon as Noel got a stout hickory handle fitted into the grubbing hoe, Stephanie started to work, chopping away at sprouts and vines, at waterweeds and nettles. But Bertha had need of Noel before he could begin chopping down trees. He’d have to shoot some squirrels for dinner, she said. And then he’d have to fetch his flint and tinder box and kindle her a fire.
The sun shone directly down on the abandoned corn patch when at last the squirrels were broiled, and the Venables sat on a fallen tree butt picking the meat from the little bones.
“Mammy, when can we have bread?” piped up Willie.
It had been more than a week since the last of the meal had been dusted out of the bag in which it had been carried. The last part of the journey among the foothills the Venables ate parched corn for bread, and acorns. Twice Bertha had sent the young uns to look in the black mud along the back water of a creek for the thick roots of the arrow-leaved wappatoo. These they stuck on sticks and roasted over the fire, and ate in place of bread.
Willie’s face, Stephanie noticed, was growing peaked and pasty for lack of bread. So was Rob’s. Many a time on the journey Rob had complained of a pain in his stomach. Then Bertha had set him to looking for spicy, spindle-shaped ginseng roots to chew.
“It takes a sight of time to make bread,” Bertha told Willie, patiently, “and a passel of hands. First, we’ll have to get this clearin’ in plantin’ shape, and that’ll take Noel cuttin’ down trees, and Steffy grubbin’ sprouts, and you diggin’ up weeds a matter of three days, I reckon. Barrin’ bad weather. A sight of weather, good, bad, and indifferent, goes into bread, too.”
“What’re Rob and Pappy goin’ to do?” asked Willie. “Will the surveyin’ take all summer?”
“That won’t take more than a day, I reckon,” Bertha told him. “’Bout dark, Rob and your pappy’ll be home with a deed. Then they’ll help with the clearin’. But there’s only one ax, and only one grubbin’ hoe, and only one goose neck hoe. And the wilderness is eternal great big against one ax, one grubbin’ hoe, and one goose neck hoe.
“But never mind,” she consoled Willie. “’Bout Monday, after Noel gets handles fitted into the plow, your pappy’ll hitch up Job and break this new ground the best he can in between the stumps. Then he’ll get him a thorn tree and put logs on it and let Job drag it around to harrow the ground. Then Steffy’ll dig holes, and you and Cassie can drop corn in ’em. You’ll have to be mighty careful not to lose a solitary kernel. Every kernel means a hoecake. You’ll drop three kernels in every hill. Then Steffy’ll come along with the hoe and cover ’em up.”
“And then they’ll come up, and grow big, and then well have bread,” said Willie, his eyes shining in his lean face.
“But not so all-fired fast as that,” said Noel, stretching on his back to rest.
Bertha took a strip of bark and raked ashes over the live coals to keep the seed of the fire Noel had kindled.
“Not till the sun and the rain do their work, Willie,” she said. “It takes a heap of sun and rain, workin’ at corn sprouts, to turn ’em into bread. A body mustn’t ever forget he can’t raise corn all by hisself, but has to have the sun and the rain to help him.
“And while the sun and the rain are doin’ their work, us Venables’ll have to do ours,” Bertha told him. “Rob and Steffy’ll have to keep the sprouts and the weeds chopped out so the young corn can push its roots deep into the ground. And you and Cassie’ll have to sit out here in the clearin’, day after day after day, and scare varmints and squirrels and crows away.”
“That long, Mammy?” pleaded Willie.
“It takes a sight of patience on the part of humans to make bread,” Bertha told him. “Even after the corn’s laid by, and there’s no more work for humans to put their hands to in the corn patch, they still have to wait. And wait. And waitin’s lots harder than workin’. But by and by, one mornin’ you’ll find a cornstalk puttin’ out gold tassels at the top, and spillin’ red silks out of an ear shapin’ up in a middle joint. Finer than gold and red banners of fine French silks and velvets belongin’ to a King Louis.”
“And then we’ll have bread!” cried Willie.
“Then, in a week or so, about the end of July, when the corn is in the milk, we’ll have roastin’ ears,” said Bertha. “I calculate we can spare two messes of roastin’ ears from the patch. Then we’ll have to wait some more till the milk in the kernels thickens and the kernels begin to dry and harden.”
“And then we’ll have bread?” asked Willie.
“Then we’ll have mush,” said Bertha. “We’ll scrape some of the ears, and boil the kernels in the kettle, and season ’em with fat from the bear your pappy’s goin’ to kill, and we’ll have us a mess of mush. And then we’ll have to wait a little longer.”
“Much longer?”
“Till frost is in the air. Till the blue geese are honkin’ south, and the oaks are firin’ up. Till Noel gets me a hominy block hollered out, and fixes me up a pestle for poundin’ the kernels.”
“And then we’ll have bread!” shouted Willie.
“Then we’ll have bre
ad!” echoed Bertha. “And we’ll have vittles to eat with it—taters to roast in the ashes, and shucky beans to boil with side meat, reckonin’ the bears let our pigs grow up. And we’ll have venison that your pappy brings home from the woods, and walnuts and hickory nuts and chinquapins that you and Cassie bring home from the hollers. And we’ll maybe have honey, if we find a bee tree Noel can rob. And Steffy’ll gather elderberries, and I’ll make some cordial for special days like your birthday.”
Willie sat straight on the log, his eyes dancing.
Stephanie shut her eyes to keep from seeing him. She tried to shut out of her mind, too, the image of such tasty vittles. The thought of them only mocked a body sitting there in the midst of nothing. She threw away the bone she was picking and got to her feet.
“But don’t forget, there’s a sight of work between the Venables and bread, young uns,” said Bertha. “We’d best be at it.”
For an hour Stephanie grubbed at stubborn roots while Noel chopped away at a big, girdled popple. Already Stephanie had blisters on her palms from the rough hoe handle.
In the middle of the afternoon she and Noel went down the hill to the spring. Stephanie doused her face in the cold, clear water, made a cup of her hands and drank from it, and cooled her hot, tired, dusty feet in the rill.
“Did you hear what the deputy was tellin’ Pappy this mornin’?” she asked, as Noel flopped on his stomach and drew water into his mouth in long, cooling sups, like a thirsty horse.
“No, what?” he brought up his dripping chin to ask.
As they rested in the shade of the trees, everything she could remember about Indians, about North Carolina taxes, about black Kentucky land that a body would almost part with his soul to own, about the sorry state of the Continental Congress and the Congress’ money, about Lonesome Tilly Balance, word for word, Stephanie told him.
What Noel thought about these things he kept to himself.
“Noel,” asked Stephanie, plucking a sprig of the wild mint that fringed the spring and nibbling at the leaves, “what makes people hexed?”
“They lose their bearin’s,” said Noel.
“Are they born that way?”
“Sometimes,” said Noel. “Sometimes not.”
“Then what happens to make ’em hexed?” asked Stephanie. “What do you reckon happened to Lonesome Tilly Balance?”
“Deputy said he squatted out here all by his self, didn’t he?” reminded Noel. “Been out here all by his lonesome four or five years maybe. Maybe longer. No folks around. Ain’t that enough to cause a body to lose his bearin’s? How’d you like to live in these woods by your lonesome?” he asked.
Stephanie shivered.
“Know what Uncle Lucien says?” asked Noel. “He says it’s bein’ afraid that makes people hexed, that makes ’em lose their bearin’s. Everybody that’s afraid’s a little bit hexed, ’cause he’s lost his bearin’s just so much.”
“Are you afraid, Noel?” Stephanie asked.
“Not specially. As long as I’m not taken unawares, I’m not specially afraid. And I don’t mean to be taken unawares.”
“Not even of red men, are you afraid?”
“Not even of red men.”
“Not even of the British?”
“Not even of the British.”
“Not even of Lonesome Tilly?”
“Shucks, naw, Steffy. The more hexed a man is, if he ain’t plumb daft, the more he hankers for a little human kindness. If ever you meet up with him, just say ‘Howdy’ natural like. Don’t run away from him.”
The sun was setting when Jonathan and Rob came back from their surveying.
“Deputy says my deed’ll be all fixed up in due time,” Jonathan announced, proud as a royal governor. “I ’low hit’ll be a matter of three or four days. Somebody’ll have to go to the Fort to get hit. Now, all we have to do is to get our crops out, an’ build us a cabin, an’ hunt enough to stave off starvation till the corn’s ripe.”
The Venables slept that night on pallets of pine boughs which Bertha and Willie gathered and banked against a near-by wooded knoll. Squirrel meat was their supper—squirrel meat and the milk that ought to come a little higher in the piggin at milking time, now that Brownie’s long, hard journey was over and she could forage her fill on buffalo grass and pea vine and young cane growing in the river bottom.
For three days, from early to late, Jonathan and Noel chopped away at the dead trees. They wrapped log chains around the straightest trunks and with the help of Job snaked them to the edge of the clearing to be used in building the cabin. The limbs and the brush Noel and Stephanie heaped in a great mound in the middle of the clearing, and burned in a roaring, booming, crackling, snapping fire.
At the end of a week, Jonathan looked proudly over the clearing, dotted with stumps, and planted with the seed brought from the Back Country—corn and beans, potatoes and gourds and pumpkins.
“I reckon a body ought to start raisin’ a cabin tomorrow,” he said. “But ’twouldn’t be a bad notion to get my deed first. Noel, you an’ Steffy go in to the Fort tomorrow an’ see if the deputy’s got the deed all writ out. Don’t know as a body need get in a swivet over hit,” he added, by way of excusing his haste, “but I reckon I’ll breathe easier when I get my hands on them papers. Me an’ Rob’ll go buffalo huntin’.”
In the early morning, Noel and Stephanie set out toward Harrod’s Fort, along the trail they had traveled so short a time before, using as guide marks the slashes the deputy had made in the undergrowth. Noel walked in front, carrying his rifle. Stephanie trudged barefoot behind him, her eyes always watching the woods for a sign of moving things.
The Fort, they found, was restless with people coming and going, just as it had been when the Venables arrived from the Back Country. It was sure a sight to see the flatboats on the Ohio, folks said. Looked like there’d be nobody left at Fort Pitt, if people kept coming to Kentucky at this rate. And folks were pouring out of Virginia and the Carolinas like water out of a pitcher spout, grabbing up Kentucky land like it was a hoecake in the wilderness, they said.
“Howdy, young uns,” said the surveyor when he spied Noel and Stephanie standing in the doorway of the blockhouse. The deputy was nowhere about. “What you after?”
“Pappy’s deed,” said Noel. “Is it ready?”
“Jonathan Venable’s deed? Why, no, son. That land was just surveyed. Just a week ago,” said the surveyor.
“But Pappy thought the deed might be ready,” Noel explained. “The deputy told him ‘in due time.’ Pappy sent us to see.”
“Don’t your pappy know the law on that?” asked the surveyor, frowning at Noel.
“I reckon not,” said Noel. “What is the law?”
“Why, he can’t get his deed till December,” said the surveyor. “That’s accordin’ to the law. That’s to give the Land Court a chance to hear all rival claims that may be entered on the same tract, you see. Now, if no caveat is entered against your pappy’s land, in December the Land Court’ll make out his deed and his title’s clear. But if anybody else claims the same tract of land, and registers that claim with the Court of Commissioners before December 1, the court’ll have to decide to which party to award the land.”
The surveyor spoke kindly enough to Noel, but his words chilled Stephanie to the marrow. She turned them over in her mind, trying to change their meaning, trying to find in them some certainty to cling to. But a law like that was clear and cold as ice, she reckoned, and not a great comfort to a body who had just planted his last kernel of corn in a clearing in exchange for which he had given most of his worldly goods.
“Is it likely anybody else’ll claim Pappy’s land?” she heard Noel asking.
“Every day, son, somebody turns up claimin’ somebody else’s land under old royal grants of some sort or another,” the surveyor said. “All we can do is to enter all claims, survey them, and decide who comes first. We try to play no favorites.”
Stephanie’s legs felt weak under
her. She turned to go, but Noel had one more question to put to the surveyor.
“Is there a copy of the Land Law hereabouts?” he asked.
“No closer than Williamsburg, I reckon,” said the surveyor.
“I—I thought I’d like to read it,” explained Noel.
The surveyor smiled at him. “Can you read?” he asked.
“Some,” said Noel.
“Well, I reckon you’ll have to go to Williamsburg to read the Land Law,” said the surveyor. “But tell your pappy to go right ahead plantin’ his crops. ’Tain’t likely anybody’ll try to oust him. When it comes to a showdown in these parts between old royal claims and corn roots in the ground, the corn roots can outtalk the royal claims mighty nigh every time.”
Noel had no fine words to say to the surveyor in exchange for his heartening advice, but as he turned to go, a warmth kindled by the surveyor’s kindness spread over his slim face.
“Say!” called the surveyor after Noel. He got up from the three-legged puncheon stool on which he sat and came and leaned against the door jamb. “You got any books to read?” he asked.
“No,” said Noel. “Nary a one.”
“Would you like to have one?” asked the surveyor.
Stephanie glanced at Noel. Why, that was what he was hankering after, she decided. Books. At the mention of books, he looked like a body who has been starved to skin and bones drawing up his stool to plenty. His whole face lighted up from the roots of his sun-bleached hair to his neck, and light flooded his eyes and washed away the sullenness and the lonesomeness.
“Have you—got a book?” Noel asked.
“No,” said the surveyor. “But a preacher feller came through here last week. Stayed all night here at the Fort on his way to his claim over close to Stoner’s. He had three or four books with him—a Bible, and George Fox’s Journal, and Barkley’s Apology, and Pilgrim’s Progress. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll ask him if he comes over this way again to bring you a book. When you come in to the Fort you can pick it up, then bring it back when you finish.”
Noel stood tongue-tied. Stephanie nudged his arm.
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