Tree of Freedom

by Rebecca Caudill

  “Come right in and sit down and rest yourself, Prissie,” said Bertha, as she took the baby from the weary woman and led the way to the cabin. “I declare, if you ain’t the very picture of a human bein’ at the end of her rope!”

  Prissie Pigot, however, couldn’t drag her weary body into the fine new cabin. Instead, she sank down on the doorstep Noel had made of a short length of tree trunk, and rubbed her bare, scratched, swollen, aching feet.

  “I begun to think we’d never make hit,” she groaned. “Never in this world. The cow went dry an’ we run clean out of anything to eat ’cept what we could find in the woods. For days now we been livin’ like varmints.”

  “Well,” soothed Bertha, “you got nothin’ to do right now but rest yourself. I count it a stroke of good luck you Pigots came along just when our cabin was in need of folks to help with a house warmin’. Here, Steffy,” she said, laying the baby on the bed, “we’ll pitch right in and get, dinner. You run down to the spring, you and Willie, and look for poke sallet. Rob, you run right quick, you and Noel, and pop off some squirrels. This evenin’ Jonathan can shoot some turkeys. And bring up some fresh water, Steffy. There’s nothin’ like cold spring water to put life back into a poor, gone body.”

  The day was a celebration for fair, with every Venable trying to outdo every other Venable in his welcome to the Pigots. Between traipsing off on errands for Bertha, Stephanie played with the Pigot baby, and picked up scraps of talk from Prissie and Jason.

  The Pigots had come from North Carolina, on the Yadkin, she learned. Their claim lay across Salt River, on the western bank, and a little to the south of the Venables.

  Yes, Jason had his pre-emption papers. He took them out of his shirt bosom and showed them to Jonathan, reeling off as he did so the bases for his claim—tomahawk rights, initials cut on a sugar maple tree near a sink hole, a shelter built. He couldn’t read the writing on the paper, he said, but the deputy had seemed to think his was a rock-bottom claim. The deputy was coming out the next day, or the day after that, to survey the land. Until the claim was surveyed, the Pigots would stay with the Venables.

  No, Jason hadn’t heard a word of Garret Bedinger, nor of his agent, Adam Frohawk. Nobody had made mention of any such person claiming Salt River land.

  The Pigots were like a crowbar for prying loose the tongues of the Venables and setting them to talking all at once. Though Jason Pigot was worn out with his long travels, he must examine every notch and corner, every shake and puncheon of the Venable cabin, and hear from Jonathan all the improvements he had made on his claim, and all he had in mind to make; how far into the woods he meant to girdle trees and extend his cleared fields that fall, how far the following spring.

  “Leastways,” Jonathan explained when he finished marking off for Jason Pigot the improvements he had in mind, “that’s what I was a-goin’ to do till this feller Frohawk showed up. Now I ain’t so sure.”

  Willie showed the Pigot young uns where he had found the baby wood ducks, pointing the spot out to them from a safe distance as if he were afraid of surprising Lonesome Tilly again. And Bertha, Stephanie noticed, was full of the sort of talk to put backbone into a poor, dispirited woman like Prissie Pigot. Or maybe, thought Stephanie, glancing suspiciously at her mammy, Bertha was talking starch into her own backbone, so that she could face whatever December brought her.

  Sometimes, for a moment, Stephanie forgot the cloud hovering over their claim as she listened to the talk about her. Something like singing was stirring within her. Now that neighbors had come, the spell of the lonely wilderness was gone forever. Back and forth, people would come and people would go. There would be cabin raisings for every family settling along the river. There would be corn huskings in the fall, and quilting bees in the winter. When enough people had settled around them, some Sunday a traveling preacher would hold a big camp meeting in the woods, and everybody for miles around would come to listen, and to out-sing all music, just as they did in the Back Country. And if her pappy felt too crowded, she reckoned a world filled with trees and bears and deer in which he could lose himself for a week at a time stretched a thousand miles beyond them.

  That night after supper of turkey, speckled trout, and boiled wild duck had been eaten, and the least young uns put to bed on the pallets in the loft, Jonathan and Bertha, Jason and Prissie sat about the doorstep in the soft moonlight that drenched the clearing, talking, talking. Noel and Stephanie hung about on the edge, listening.

  “Reckon you uns have heard the latest war news,” Jason Pigot said. “Looked like Charleston was gettin’ ready to fall when we pulled out. Lincoln, he ain’t no general. Lets that British general, Clinton, cut a wide swath all around him. If Lincoln had a had an army ’stid of the two thousand raw militia he was able to muster, he mought ’a’ fit hit out with Clinton. He claimed he was goin’ to have ten thousand recruits, but hit was all big talk. They never showed up.”

  Down by the river a mockingbird in the top of a sycamore tree was spilling his wild song over the moonlit woods, and off somewhere on a grassy hillock a whippoorwill was whippering himself hoarse.

  “Looks like nobody’s had any stummick for fightin’ since the British overrun Georgia as easy as back water at high tide. Even Marion’s a-layin’ low, they say, with nobody much a-joinin’ up to help him.”

  A baby owl whimpered in a tree overhead, and on the river bank among the cane and the cat tails bullfrogs coughed and croaked a somber tune to go with the words Jason Pigot was saying.

  “I used to think there was somethin’ in this liberty stuff, mebbe,” Jason went on, “an’ no taxation ’thout representation, an’ this here notion they call democracy. But looks like this here war’s a-goin’ to end one of these days. An’ when hit does, His Majesty’s goin’ to be sittin’ high an’ mighty, as always, an’ ever’ single colony’s goin’ to be kowtowin’ an’ scrapin’ an’ bowin’ around his throne an’ claimin’ hit was some other colony that started the fracas. They’ll be a-harpin’ on some other tune, I reckon, the colonies will, ’stid of that un folks have been singin’ in the Back Country, ‘The cause of Boston is the cause of all.’”

  In the moonlight Stephanie noticed Noel’s slim figure lean toward Jason.

  “What’s goin’ to happen to the folks in Charleston if the British take it?” he asked. He was thinking about Uncle Lucien, Stephanie knew.

  “Depends on who they are, I reckon,” Jason said. “The militia’ll be dismissed an’ sent home, apt as not. That’s the British pattern for handlin’ the militia. The British know they don’t fight wuth a continental. An’ a body can’t rightly blame ’em, I reckon. I wouldn’t fight, either, if I was faced with a well-trained army havin’ plenty of ammunition an’ shoes on their feet an’ vittles in their craws, if all I got out of fightin’ was that no-account Philadelphy money. Or promises. Promises never fed a man yit. Nor put clothes on his back.”

  “What’ll happen to the civilians?” prodded Noel.

  “If they can prove they ain’t never been disloyal to His Majesty in any shape, form, or fashion, they’ll fare all right. I reckon the British won’t be too hard on Tidewater folks, seein’ as most of ’em are Tories, anyhow. Sympathizers with the British are turnin’ up from behind ever’ stump in Caroliny now. But if folks give any cause for suspicion, they’ll be paroled. Put in jail, mebbe. Mebbe sent to Florida, or thrown off on one of the islands to die of fever an’ shakes. Or smallpox. Smallpox is ragin’ in Charleston now. Slaves brung hit in from Africy. Folks dyin’ like flies. So many slaves a-dyin’ of smallpox, they say folks jist won’t bid any more on one that’s never had smallpox. Hit’s jist the same as throwin’ his money away for a man to buy a slave ’thout pock marks on his face.

  “Oh, I reckon all a feller’s got to do to save his skin is to claim he’s a loyalist,” Jason said, getting back to the war. “He’ll be all right. Of course, if he decides to be stubborn, like as not the British’ll shoot him right in his own house an’ turn his wif
e an’ young uns out to forage in the woods. They’ve done hit many a time. That’s why I reckoned now’d be as good a time as any to take to the wilderness an’ let them as wants to fight hit out.

  “Hit don’t seem right,” he added after a moment. “But what’s a body to do when the country ain’t got no sizable army, an’ what hit has got is always wantin’ to quit an’ go home? An’ look at hits generals. Look at General Washington. Still settin’ there on his haunches eyein’ Cornwallis as if that’d win a war. What’s more, ever’ colony from Massachusetts to Georgia is bankrupt, an’ nine men out of ten’d be willin’ to sell out to the enemy for a square meal, an’ a promise that things’d settle down now an’ folks could live peaceable. Folks are plumb wore out with this here war, and the country’s in a mighty bad way, I tell you. Thanks to them fine speechmakers lawyerin’ in Philadelphy.”

  Stephanie, though she tried hard to listen, heard little more that night. Long after she had gone to bed in the loft, she heard Jason Pigot’s dark words set to the music of owls hoo-hoo-hooing softly in the woods, and the far-off screaming of a painter.

  After a long time something on the other side of the loft moved. Stephanie turned her head. In the pale light cast by the moon through the undaubed cracks between the logs, she saw Noel get up from his pallet and peer outside.

  She lay, stiff as a ramrod, watching and listening. Was he running away again? Was he going to try to cross the mountains and find the old Swamp Fox, Marion, and help him? Did he mean to try to find Uncle Lucien? And what would Jonathan say to all this?

  Stephanie knew what her pappy would say. He would wake up as sure as shooting if Noel tried to get down the ladder and out of the door. He slept as lightly here in the wilderness as a hen with a flock of day-old chickens. And he would whip Noel as he had never whipped him before, with all the Pigots looking on. And Noel would go away inside himself, and this time he would lock the door. And nothing would ever be right. Nothing ever again.

  She raised on her elbow.

  “Noel!” she whispered sharply. “Go back to bed! Right away!”

  Noel made no sign that he heard her. But in a minute he turned from the crack and lay down on his pallet again beside Rob. Stephanie lay awake far into the night until she heard him breathing deeply and quietly. Then she, too, slept.

  8. Report from Charleston

  The rooster awoke Stephanie the next morning as he rose on the limb where he had perched during the night, flapped his wings mightily, arched his long, gleaming neck, and hurled his screaming welcome to the sun.

  Rising on her elbow, Stephanie peered across the cockloft to see in the dim light that Noel was still abed with Rob, Willie, and the two Pigot boys, and sleeping.

  She lay back on her pallet, satisfied. But it was a short-lived satisfaction as the recollections of Jason’s bad news from the Back Country and of Noel’s actions in the dead of the night crowded in on her. Nothing seemed settled. Nothing seemed put in a place to stay, least of all, Noel.

  It could be such a splendid day, she lay thinking, if only this thing she knew about Noel didn’t keep stinging her like a sweat bee. As soon as the deputy showed up with his chains and his compass and tally pins, Jonathan, would be going across the river with Jason Pigot to help survey the Pigot claim while the rest of the Pigots stayed at the cabin.

  There wouldn’t be a whole sight to make that day different from any other, Stephanie realized. The Venables couldn’t have a company dinner such as Bertha would like to set before the Pigots, because company vittles would have to wait for the harvest. They would have their chores to do as usual—milking, calling up and counting the pigs which were growing sleek and fat, cooking, hoeing corn, beans, and potatoes, looking at the Tree of Freedom, hunting for double-yolked turkey eggs in rotten logs, and duck eggs along the river, helping Noel find the right piece of hickory for the rim of the spinning wheel he was making for Bertha.

  But there would be cheerful noise around the clearing and in the cabin. Willie and Cassie would play the livelong day with the Pigot young uns, and the clearing would ring with their whooping and cutting up as they rode stick horses around the cabin, and played William-a-Trim-a-Toe and spat hand on the doorstep. And there would be talk to which Stephanie could listen all day long—little talk between her mammy and Prissie Pigot about things sure and familiar—about the baby’s teething; about recipes for cooking bear’s meat and potato pudding, apple fancy and gooseberry fool, punkin chips and wonders; about cures for the shakes and flux, rheumatism and snake bite; about shearing the sheep; about dyeing the yarn with onion skins, with shoemake and dogmachus, with a steeping of scrub-oak bark and maple bark, with pokeberry and alum, with the frail blue petals of the wild fleur-de-Louis; about spinning and carding and weaving.

  For herself, Stephanie knew the day was going to hold no such trifling ease. She was going to stay within sight of Noel all day long, she promised herself as she buttoned her dress. If Noel had it in his head to run away again, she would help him, because she didn’t want him caught a second time. It was a thing he had to do, she reckoned.

  Noel yawned and opened his eyes.

  “You’d better come and call the pigs, Noel,” she said, as calm as a Sunday morning, “while I milk.”

  Stephanie, in all her imaginings, never expected Noel’s chance to come as suddenly as it did. At breakfast, Bertha complained that their last grain of salt was gone and her duck egg without salt was as tasteless as cambric tea.

  “You got salt, Jason?” asked Jonathan.

  “Nary a grain,” said Jason. “Salt like ever’thing else give out on the way over.”

  “Come fall, when the work ain’t pushin’ us so hard, we’ll have to get together an’ bile us down a supply,” promised Jonathan.

  “Reckon hit’d take a week hard runnin’, wouldn’t hit,” asked Jason, “to bile down enough for both families?”

  “All of that,” Jonathan assured him. “Mebbe more. Jist depends. Hit’ll take four to six hundred gallons of water for a bushel of salt, an’ then hit can’t hardly pass for salt, what with all the specks of dirt an’ sech-like that manage to get biled up with hit. Noel,” he added, “while I’m a-helpin’ Jason with his surveyin’ today, you mought go in to the Fort an’ see if you can trade turkey eggs for some salt. Somebody mought have a little extry. Rob can go with you.”

  “I want to go with Noel, Pappy,” spoke up Stephanie.

  “No,” said Rob, with his jaw set. “Pappy said for me to go. Didn’t you, Pappy?”

  “Don’t make no particular difference,” answered Jonathan, anxious to be off across the river and traipsing about Jason Pigot’s claim.

  “Then I’m goin’,” decided Rob. “Besides, Steffy,” he added, “Mammy needs you.”

  Rob’s words were true enough, Stephanie knew. Between the hoeing and the grubbing, the cooking and the milking, the spinning and the dyeing and the weaving, Bertha had work lined up and waiting for her right down to Christmas. Today, however, Bertha would be too busy visiting with Prissie Pigot to ply her own hands overly much, or to recollect what Stephanie ought to be doing.

  Stephanie felt panicky inside. Here was Noel’s chance to run away being passed to him on a silver platter, the way Bertha said a slave passed meat on a silver platter to rich Tidewater folks, but if Noel wanted to reach out and take it, Rob would be nothing but a hindrance.

  “Can’t I go, Pappy?” Stephanie begged. “Just this once? In place of Rob?”

  Jonathan looked down into her upturned face, and read the longing in her eyes.

  “You let Steffy go this time, Rob,” he said. “I ’spect the deputy could use a handy boy like you in the surveyin’, same as he did before.”

  The sun was almost directly overhead when Noel and Stephanie, having gathered the big kettle full of turkey eggs, set out in the direction of Harrod’s Fort. Noel walked ahead, his rifle on his shoulder, carrying the kettle, and in his shirt bosom a piece of jerk to stay their hunger. Stephanie aga
in traipsed barefoot at his heels.

  Changes, Stephanie noticed, had taken place in the woods since the day she and Noel went asking for the deed to the Venable land. The early blossoms had faded and gone. Now, in June, drifts of spoonwood blossoms, white and rosy pink, like the frail color of Tidewater seashells, swept down the hillsides waiting the touch of Stephanie’s hand to spring and scatter a tiny shower of golden dust. Along the banks of the branch, wild blue fleurs-de-Louis grew with their roots in the mud, their blossoms with the air of France about them guarded by swordlike leaves; and on the touch-me-nots dipping in the stream tiny sweeplike buds were beginning to swell.

  The earthy, springtime smell in the woods was gone, too. Now the woods smelled close and sickly sweet of the great, white waxen bowls opening on the cucumber trees, of the gaudy tulips blossoming on the yellow popple trees, and of the buckeye trees, each like a big green pyramid holding up a hundred pyramids of red. And on the bee trees, pale green blades were forming on the dark green leaves, sending forth slender stems on which tight buds were shaping.

  Stephanie noted where the bee trees grew. In July a thousand starry blossoms would light the way for bees which, when they had sipped their fill, would likely swarm in the nearest hollow tree. She had little time that morning, however, to think of honey.

  “Noel,” she asked, as she plodded behind him through the woods, “do you reckon the British’ll take Charleston?”

  “Apt as not,” said Noel, “if everything Jason Pigot tells is gospel.”

  “Supposin’ they do,” she said. “Do you reckon they’ll behave the way Jason Pigot says?”

  “Apt as not.”

  “What’ll happen if they do?” she asked. “What’ll they do to Uncle Lucien, do you reckon?”

  “Put him in jail, apt as not,” said Noel.

  They trudged along silently for a distance.

  “Seems like whatever happens to Uncle Lucien,” Noel said, after a while, “I’ll always carry him here inside me.”