The Frontiersman’s Daughter (19 page)

30

At last her trunks arrived from Briar Hill, and Lael was overjoyed, opening the heavy lids and examining her schoolbooks one by one. In the first, wrapped in linen, was the rose gown she’d worn to a ball. With a sigh she drew it out, and its silken folds rustled and shone in the candlelight. She’d meant it to be her marrying dress. Despite being creased from travel, the gown was too grand for the likes of the rough cabin. She hung it from a peg nevertheless, for its beauty never failed to move her.

She’d worn it only once. Would she ever again? Not here, surely, for folks would say she was putting on airs. It would make a fine wedding gown, fit to be handed down to a daughter. Despite its grandeur, the color had always reminded her of pink dogwoods in spring. There were shoes also, narrow and long, of the same pale pink with small wooden heels. She remembered how they’d pinched her feet when she danced that long autumn’s eve in Virginia and how she’d wished that her many partners had simply been Simon.

With a sigh she closed the trunks. Two stacks of books lay on the trestle table. One for keeping and one for sharing. She would give
Aesop’s Fables
to Lovey Runion, for it had pictures as well as words. The rest she would take to Uncle Neddy.

She hadn’t seen Ned Click since she left the settlement, when Pa had taken her away, and it was high time she visited him. Would he even recognize her? She misdoubted he would.

Before she had even alighted from the mare he came out of the cabin. “Why, Lael Click,” he said slowly. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“I’m a sight and I’m sore, is all,” she said, removing her straw hat and fanning her warm face. “You live a far piece.”

“That’s how I like it.” He grinned and helped her down and they stood face to face, studying the other.

Time, she determined, had been hard on her uncle. The sun had baked his face a tobacco brown, and he was even leaner than she remembered. A woman would have seen to that, adding pounds to his leanness, but he’d never married, nor did he come to the fort in times of trouble.

She followed him into the shade of a big oak where a blessed breeze blew. Gratefully, she sat down on a stump and looked out on steep fields of tobacco and cotton. Clearly, Uncle Neddy was a man of means. To come here she’d had to skirt Simon’s land, for it bordered Ned Click’s own. His proximity had kept her away this long, but it paled to what faced her now.

Did Ned know of Pa, his brother? Did he ever wonder about Ransom, or had he somehow seen him in her absence?

She smiled when he passed her a cup of cold cider.

“I reckon you come to tell me about your pa,” he said, looking down at his boots. “No need, Lael. I already knowed.”

She didn’t ask him how. The loss was still so painful she dared not discuss it lest it bring on a fresh fit of weeping. Instead she spoke of the living, treading carefully, wondering if this was a sore subject for him as well. “Ransom’s nearly grown now, but I haven’t seen him since I went to Virginia. Ma says he looks some like you.”

“More’s the pity.”

“He’s never been one to shirk work either, so you can be proud.”

“Reckon he’ll ever come round here?”

The expectant question touched her, and she sensed his deep lonesomeness. “I reckon he would if we were to ask him.”

He looked out on the nearly ripened fields, squinting into the sun. “Does he—was he ever told about me?”

“I don’t know that he was. Maybe now that Pa’s passed on he knows.”

“And your ma?”

She sighed again without meaning to. Was her uncle once as sore about losing Ma as she herself was about Simon? “Ma’s remarried now. To a barrister in Bardstown.”

He grew quiet for a time. “Livin’ in a town, she’ll be safe from any Injun trouble. Sara never was one for the wilderness.”

Lael felt at a loss then remembered the books. “I brought you some reading material.” She went to the mare and retrieved the books from a saddlebag, gratified to see his eyes light up. Turning them over in his work-worn hands, he read the titles aloud
. The Navigator. Thomas’s Hymns. The Order of Man in Ancient Times. John Donne’s Poems.

“They’re yours to keep or to share,” she told him.

He sat back down, clearly reluctant for her to go. “Tell me about that fancy school of yours.”

And so she did, recalling the echoing rooms and ticking clocks and endless books. It pleasured her to picture again the sea, as blue as a raggedy robin in spring, then gray as a mourning dove in winter. They passed a pleasant hour, sipping sweet cider and reminiscing, and Lael felt sad to take her leave. Aside from Ma and Ransom and Ma Horn, Uncle Neddy was the only living relative she knew.

“I’ll be back shortly,” she promised, hooking arms with him. “And we’ll talk books.”

He walked with her a ways to the thin trail that led down off the ridge. Suddenly he called after her, “Will you—do you— forgive me for what I done . . . for runnin’ off with your ma?”

Surprised, she turned around and looked at him from her perch in the saddle. “It takes two to run off, Uncle. And aye, I forgive you.”

He nodded and again looked down at his boots. A wave of pity stirred her and she kicked her horse gently, the surrounding woods a blur of brown and green. She’d always had a soft spot for Uncle Neddy. But had she forgiven her mother? Nay, she decided. Never forgiven her or understood her, then or now. Nor for that matter had she forgiven Simon. The hurt they’d caused her still burned bitter and bright. The burden of it tired her so, but try as she might, she could not lay it down.

31

The small corn patch was Lael’s pride. Tall enough now to whisper in the wind, the sound was as exquisite as the rustle of a silk skirt. In the cool of the morning she would hoe until the sun rose and touched her back, reminding her to go and eat. She could think of as little or as much as she liked, lost in the gentle monotony of hoeing and watering, and she could dress as she liked, barefoot and bonnetless, sometimes wearing nothing more than a shift, her long braid sashaying around her hips.

On one such morning she was thinking of nothing more than her new milk cow and the ball of butter she’d washed and salted and secured in a cold crock just that morning. She could hear a faint tinkling coming from the woods as the cow foraged in the brush. The fort’s cooper had just finished her butter churn, and the dasher already seemed conformed to her hand.

She paused to catch her breath, staring at the cornplanter birds hopping from row to row. What a harvest she would have! The thought made her giddy. She thought of Ransom who loved to farm, like Neddy. She missed him with a fierceness she’d not thought possible.

That very night she penned him a letter and told him how tall the corn was, and about the gathering storm that growled outside her window behind a bank of blue-black clouds. But she omitted her fear about the prowling painter, whose large prints she’d found along the muddy banks of the creek. Nor did she tell him she had no firewood for winter. Or that the barn roof leaked and a beam in the springhouse was rotting.

With a sigh she began to sign her name, but it was no more than a scratch upon the page, for her ink had run out. Beyond the open door, rain began to fall, at first a whisper and then a pounding. All familiar, reassuring sounds. She wondered how it would be to hear another human voice break in upon her solitude. Would she, in time, grow fey as Lovey Runion?

She began to wonder where Captain Jack was and if he would come by her cabin. When she was out herbing in the woods or wandering the river bottoms, a strange yearning filled her heart to come upon him watching her, perhaps waiting to speak to her. Sometimes in her aloneness she sensed she was not really alone at all, that the very woods watched her, shielding him from view.

Nay, she wasn’t lonesome . . . yet. But she was alone.

On a sultry afternoon in late August when the sourwood tree by the springhouse hummed from the thickness of the bees in its waxy white blossoms, Simon returned. Lael met him on the porch, gun in hand.

“You’re a far piece from home, Simon Hayes,” she said, and her tone put distance between them.

“I just come from Susanna’s,” he replied, leaning against a porch post and partaking of a plug of tobacco.

“I don’t have time to talk.”

“I reckon you don’t with all the work that needs to be done around here. Still no wood for winter, I see.”

The judgment in his tone riled her. She gripped the gun harder and found her hands were sweating.

“But I could remedy that,” he said softly, the eyes that held hers a rich, inviting brown.

Her face turned crimson clear to the collar of her dress. “I’m sure you have plenty to do about your own place without worryin’ about mine.”

He stepped closer. “Seems like I can’t turn my hand to nothin’ when all I do is think about you.”

Weak, she leaned against the wall of the cabin, the gun pointing down. “You’ve made your bed, and you’d best lie in it.”

“Oh, I’m lying in it all right, but I’m alone when I’m doin’ it,” he said with heat. “I’m here to tell you Piper has my name but nothin’ else, Lael. Our marriage is over.”

His words forced her to look at him, to measure the truth of what he said. She ached to believe it, yet divorce was not to be reckoned with. Why, Pa would turn over in his grave. As if he took her silence for agreement, Simon stepped onto the porch and wrested the gun away from her.

Her fear doubled at his strength. “Simon—nay!”

But he pinned her against the cabin wall, the rough wood scraping her backside. His breath was hot on her face and held a hint of tobacco—and whiskey. There was no one to interrupt them now, no chapman with his wares in a wagon. He kissed her hard but missed her mouth when she turned her head away. Swearing, he tried again. Desperate, she ground her fist into his hurt shoulder, the very wound she’d plucked the lead ball from. With a fierce yell, he released her. Dodging him, she grabbed up her gun and faced him, sick at heart.

Looking into those eyes that in years past beheld her with warmth and affection but had since hardened into something chill and reviling, she felt violated. The Simon she knew was no more. She raised the gun until it was level with his chest. “You’re trespassing, to my way of thinking.”

His eyes never wavered. Nor did hers. For several eternal moments they stood, locked in a silent contest of wills. Then without a word he turned away.

She didn’t lower the rifle until he’d ridden out of sight. When she did, she was trembling as violently as Lovey Runion. Shutting the door, she set the gun back over the mantle. A terrible, crushing grief took hold of her, and she sank down on a bench, put her head in her hands, and sobbed.

Thoughts of how different her homecoming might have been wove through her head, stinging her afresh. She should have returned to find Simon unwed and waiting, then moved up on his homestead. As it was, she was nothing but a workhorse, a woman alone, so soft she could hardly split wood or hoe her garden without sprouting blisters.

That night she took time to peel bark from a slippery elm sapling, scraping out the inner ooze to spread on a clean piece of linen. She bound her hands thus each evening, and by morning the blisters were less painful and turning callused. She’d grown weak, she knew, all those years at Briar Hill. But eventually her ladylike hands would become as hard and tough as the frontier itself.

Wearied by Simon’s visit, only a bath in the river could revive her enough to make a simple supper. She overslept the next morning, coming awake to a bawling cow wanting to be milked. Not bothering to get dressed, she stumbled onto the porch and into the arms of a warm morning. The cow quieted at the sight of her, but in place of its bellowing came a piteous yelping near the churn.

A long-loved memory washed over her. There, just where the blue beads had once been years before, was a basket. An Indian basket.

Much like the willow ones woven by her ma, this was of a different pattern, its lid fastened with a leather thong. Inside was a wiggling, shivering pup. At her touch, he quieted and licked her chin. Laughing, she turned him loose, looking long at the woods.

She felt like a girl again, expectant, excited. But what a sight she made in her nightgown, her hair hanging down in a tangle, her feet bare and brown. Still, she stepped off the porch and scooped the pup up, her smile wide and satisfied.

“Why, you’re all ears and paws,” she exclaimed.
Just like Pa’s dogs, Nip and Tuck.
Surely this was no accident. Had the gift giver thought so too? “I’ll call you Tuck.”

Reluctantly, she returned to the cabin, delighted when Tuck barked around noon, announcing company. From within the paling fence of her garden, she spied Susanna and little Lael emerging from the woods on a big mule, the boys and Will walking behind.

“How you keepin’?” he called.

“Right smart,” she lied, thinking of Simon.

The boys ran toward the puppy, shrieking with delight. Will cast a long look at her and scratched his beard. “Looks like one of them Indian dogs to me.” She said nothing, thinking she was becoming as much of a mystery as Pa with her long silences and short answers.

Susanna’s face was alight, her hair a blinding copper in the noon sun. “Lael Click, I can hardly believe you’re standin’ before me hale and hearty after all that fuss at the fort.” Lael only leaned on her hoe, squinting into the sun. She nearly sighed with relief when Susanna changed the subject. “This very night there’s to be a corn huskin’ at the Powells’, and you’re invited.”

Listening, Lael attacked a clump of weeds vigorously with her hoe like she was killing snakes. Susanna stood just beyond the garden fence now, surveying the tidy rows of onions and potatoes and beans, and urged, “Say you’ll go.”

But Lael shook her head. “I’ve not been to a corn husking since I was twelve years old and danced half the night with your brother.”

“Why, that was a hundred years ago!”

Lael paused and leaned on her hoe. “Maybe in another hundred I’ll be willing.”

“Willin’ to what? Dance half the night? Eat somethin’ beside meal and sallet greens? Be with folks you care about?”

“I’m sorry, Susanna,” was all she could say.

Susanna looked as dashed as she’d ever seen her, but it was Will who looked straight at her. “You’d do right to remember that a man who has friends must himself be friendly, Lael Click.”

Lael took the quoted Scripture as a rebuke but said not a word. That night, after another meal of sallet and cornbread, long after Will and Susanna and the children had gone, she stood on the porch. The roses were into their second blooming now, making her senses swim with their heady sweetness. A handful of petals had fallen onto the porch, dainty spent blossoms that looked more silver than pink in the moonlight.

Was it her imagination or could she hear the lilting call of a fiddle on the night wind? Tuck’s ears were alert, his eyes fixed on the dark woods. For the briefest moment she was sorry she’d not gone with them. How she loved to dance! Her feet fairly tapped at the memory.

Turning abruptly, she went inside the cabin. Everything was in order. She’d swept the floor twice and returned the rag rug to its proper place before the hearth, washed and dried the supper dishes, and carried the rinse water to the garden. A bucket of fresh water sat near the door with a wooden lid, the drinking dipper hanging above it. She’d refilled the salt gourd and stored it alongside Lovey Runion’s precious honey.

There was nothing to do but light a candle and read as was her habit. She’d written Miss Mayella to request a medical book, and she’d kindly sent one.
The Complete Herbal
lay before her, unopened and unread. Strange, but she’d never been able to resist the lure of a new book. Until now.