Traces, page 4
Daniel rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin. “At a hunter’s pace, a handful of days, but at this rate, the better part of a week.”
During the days they journeyed together, Rebecca spent as much time with her mother as possible. She’d been Aylee’s right-hand helper throughout her childhood, and though she’d sometimes resented the way her mother depended upon her, she’d also taken pride in the role. Now, knowing they’d soon be parted, Rebecca was eager to learn whatever her mother might still be able to teach her.
When the path widened enough for them to walk two abreast, Rebecca took the opportunity to fall in alongside her mother so they could talk. Aylee seemed old to her, a woman in her forties grown heavy through the waist and hips. Rebecca remembered how pretty her mother had been in the years before hard work and bearing ten babies had plowed deep furrows into her face.
One afternoon, as they picked their way along a rocky stretch of trail, her mother said, “I’m sick to death of journey cake. I’d give anything for a slice of hot pigeon pie for dinner.”
“My pigeon pies have never been as tasty as yours,” Rebecca said, balancing Israel on her hip and holding James’s hand to steady him as they skirted a moss-covered boulder that jutted into the path.
“After you clean the bird, are you remembering to put a pat of fresh butter in its belly?” Aylee asked. “The bird will be dry if you don’t. And how much salt are you using—one pinch or two?” She glanced over her shoulder and caught Rebecca’s eye. “I hear that in towns like Charleston, women write out their recipes, but a woman shouldn’t need such things if she has kinfolk to teach her.”
Kinfolk—that word echoed in Rebecca’s head the rest of the day. It was the presence of kinfolk that kept her sane during those long miles when Israel was fussing and tugging at her bodice, weak but improving, wanting to be nursed; or at nightfall when the tinder was damp and she couldn’t get the fire lit, and Daniel and the older boys were complaining of hunger after a long day on the trail. On those days, her mother was her anchor. They divided their chores instinctively, drawing on years of working side by side. By the time Rebecca unbagged the meal, her mother had a kettle of water ready to hang over the fire, and when her mother was busy adding wood to the flames, Rebecca stirred the mush so it didn’t burn. It was a ragged sort of dance, but they were good partners and rarely trod on each other’s toes.
At the end of each weary day of walking, Rebecca settled the boys down to sleep on the bearskin pallet cushioned with hemlock boughs. When she and Daniel finally joined them, they eased under the blankets, and each cradled one of the younger boys to warm them. Most nights they were too tired to talk.
Of all the folks in the caravan, only Martha and Ned seemed oblivious to the hardships of the trail. Flush with the newness of young love, they walked side by side no matter how narrow the path, Ned’s arm protectively around Martha’s shoulders, shielding her from the wind. The newlywed joy that radiated between them sometimes lifted Rebecca’s spirits, and other times made her feel even more raggedy and worn.
The day Rebecca dreaded finally arrived when they reached the trailhead that would lead the Bryan party away from her, across the Blue Ridge and back to the upper reaches of the Shenandoah. She’d never been separated from her parents by more than a dozen miles; the prospect made her feel childishly anxious, as though she were about to be orphaned. Her only consolation was that Martha would continue the journey alongside her, being a Boone now herself.
Rebecca, Martha, and Aylee broke camp together for the last time, sorting out the pots and pans, wash rags and meal bags that they’d shared over the previous weeks. A soft rain began to fall, dampening their clothes and adding to the melancholy of the morning.
“Goodbye, Mama,” Rebecca said, bending to give her a hug. She clung to her, breathing in her familiar scent, and all the tears she hadn’t allowed herself to shed in front of others since the moment they were uprooted rose to the surface and spilled down her cheeks as her mother slipped from her embrace and turned to hug Martha goodbye. Only God knew when, if ever, they’d see each other again.
James and Israel stared up at Rebecca with frightened eyes, having rarely seen their mother cry, while Jesse and Jonathan looked away, as though witnessing something shameful. She had no explanation to give the older boys, nor comfort to offer the little ones. She felt as if she’d been walking shaky ground on a cliff’s edge these past days and the earth had finally given way.
As the Bryan caravan moved away from her along the trail, the horses and cattle splashed through muddy puddles that pockmarked the path, and her mother stared resolutely ahead, pulling the hood of her cloak over her hair in the misty rain, the scarlet material a bright spot of color amid the dripping gray tunnel of trees.
Rebecca knew every thread in that vivid piece of cloth, every knot, every flaw. The year before her marriage, she and her mother had spent many winter evenings tediously threading their loom to weave that material, laughing when, more than once, Rebecca had risen up beneath the crossbar and bumped her head on the solid oak beam.
“This isn’t a job for a tall woman,” Rebecca had said, rubbing her head.
“What you’re saying is it’s a job for me or Martha,” her mother had replied. “Go ahead and get those long legs of yours out of there. I’ll fit just fine.”
During long winter nights spent weaving in the firelight, there’d been time for stories and laughter, their voices raised to be heard over the thump of the treadles as the scarlet material had come to life, inch by inch, across the loom’s face.
Rebecca’s eyes clung to the cloak as if her gaze could reach across the distance, pluck one of those brilliant red threads, and tug her mother back to her side. She thought for a moment that Aylee would disappear around the bend without a backward glance, but at the last instant, she turned and waved. Rebecca raised her hand so her mother could spot her in the crowd. She imagined Aylee was smiling at her and knew exactly how her eyes would crinkle at the corners.
Martha had turned away to rejoin Ned even before Aylee was out of sight. As Rebecca stood waving, she could hear Martha and Ned behind her, conversing in low tones. Martha giggled at something Ned said as they worked to sort and repack the remaining supplies. Rebecca felt sure Martha would miss their mother, but unlike herself, Martha wouldn’t dwell on it, nor would she regret all the things left unsaid or undone.
Long after Aylee had passed from sight, Rebecca stood in the rain, staring at the empty tunnel of trees, wishing with all her might for an accepting heart, a heart more like Martha’s.
3
One morning, not long after their arrival in Culpeper, Rebecca woke before sunrise with her stomach churning. She slipped off the pallet, pulled on her cloak, and felt her way outside the cabin, then ran her hand along the rough log wall that led to the necessary. She sat in the dark confines, retching and shivering.
By the time she made her way back to the cabin, the sun was just breaking over the horizon, bathing the bare limbs of the apple trees that marched in rows across the hillside in pink-hued light. She climbed the rickety porch steps and leaned on the railing to catch her breath. The Boone family friends who had taken them in had offered them the use of this tenant cabin, but despite the aura of friendship that surrounded the arrangement, it was clear they were expected to work the surrounding fields just as any other tenant would.
The one-room cabin was sparsely furnished; their worn traveling pallets had to suffice for beds, and Rebecca served their meals on several rough boards laid across two upturned logs. Daniel had hurriedly fashioned two crude benches so at least they didn’t have to sit on the floor.
“How long are we gonna stay here, Uncle Daniel?” the normally silent Jonathan had said when they’d first seen the tiny cabin that would be their new home. The boy’s nose had wrinkled at the musty smell that wafted through the wide gaps between the logs where the chinking was missing. Their chicken coop in Carolina had been cozier.
Daniel’s only response to Jonathan’s question had been a helpless shrug.
Rebecca turned her back on the first rays of light that shone above the orchard, crossed the porch, and eased open the cabin door, hoping the rusty hinges wouldn’t squeak. The interior of the cabin was beginning to grow lighter. When she lay back down beside Daniel, chilled to the bone, he opened his eyes and looked at her quizzically.
“I’m expecting,” she said.
“When?”
The look on his face told her this was unwelcome news.
“Late October—maybe early November.” She tugged on the blanket and turned her back to him to hide the tears that pricked her eyelids. The first two times she’d told him she was pregnant, his response had been to lift her in his arms and whirl her joyfully around the room. Now, she lay stiffly in the dark, her mind racing.
The small crock of ginger that had kept her nausea at bay during her previous pregnancies had been left behind on her worktable in Carolina; she had no idea where to get more in this unfamiliar place. Would her ankles swell as badly as they had with Israel? Had she even packed the oversized shift she used when her belly grew big? She’d need to wean Israel now that another baby was on the way, and she dreaded that struggle. Couldn’t Daniel see that the prospect of caring for their family in this cramped, unsettled space, all the while growing bigger and more ungainly, was even more daunting to her than it was to him? It certainly wasn’t something she’d have chosen, given a chance to choose differently.
After a bit, Daniel slid across the pallet and spooned his body against her back, draping his arm over her side so he could rest a hand on her stomach. He let out a long sigh. “You know I love young’uns, Becca. But another mouth to feed . . .” His voice trailed off.
And that was all he said.
As Daniel began to breathe deeply, his arm heavy on her side, she lay awake, listening to the rustle of the boys as they shifted in their blankets. Since their arrival in Culpeper, Rebecca had felt Daniel growing more distant from her with each day that passed. Their abrupt uprooting had changed him, and though she wanted to unburden her heart to him, she no longer knew how to start.
It had been a shock for all of them to go from being in charge of one’s own homestead to scraping by as hired help, farming someone else’s land. Culpeper County was a good deal more civilized than the Forks, and here they were viewed as refugees from the backcountry. Which is exactly what we are, Rebecca thought.
Being suddenly uprooted had been hard on everyone, but Daniel had taken it hardest. Ned and Martha had settled into a second tenant cabin on the other side of the orchard. While Ned seemed perfectly content to farm, Daniel had never intended to be a farmer. He’d managed to find occasional work as a wagoner hauling tobacco to market in Fredericksburg, but tenant farming was really the only way to keep the family fed.
At home in Carolina, Daniel had plowed and planted just enough ground each spring to feed the family and livestock for the year, and even that was more grubbing in the dirt than he wanted to do. He’d always made a living with his gun and traps, and the rhythm of their family life had centered around the steady accumulation of hides and furs. But in this settled land, large-scale hunting was impossible.
Rebecca watched a shaft of light trace a slow course across the cabin wall, and a girlhood memory came to mind—the time her brothers had found a crow with a damaged wing. She’d watched as they fashioned a cage and carved a splint, then helped them scour the barnyard for worms to feed the glossy bird. The injury healed nicely, yet one morning they’d found him lying stiff and glassy-eyed.
“Wild things can’t be caged,” her father had told them.
Rebecca shifted uneasily as she realized the expression she’d seen on her husband’s face in the thin morning light was the look of a wild thing desperate to make his escape.
“Time to get moving, big brother; we’ve got corn to hoe.” Ned’s voice floated in through the open front door, just after sunrise.
Rebecca stepped onto the porch and saw Ned leaning on his hoe at the edge of the road. Rebecca waved and ducked back inside just as Daniel pushed the bench back from the breakfast table, crumbs clinging to his shirtfront.
Rebecca crossed paths with him, brushed off the crumbs, and leaned forward to give him a quick kiss. She was six months along now and her belly had grown so large that she waddled rather than walked. The baby seemed never to be still, shifting and turning like a fish swimming in dark water. This one, she’d warned Daniel, would arrive running.
“Jesse and Jonathan finished picking the beans in the kitchen garden for me yesterday. They’re hoping to work with you today,” she said, stepping back so her belly didn’t block his path to the door.
Daniel shook his head as he squeezed past her. “I’ll never understand those boys, wanting to do field work. Guess they got their love of farming from Ned—they surely didn’t get it from me.”
As if summoned by his name, Ned appeared, silhouetted in the doorway. “I’ll consider that last remark a compliment, big brother, though I doubt you meant it that way.”
Rebecca smiled at her brother-in-law as he stepped inside. Ned’s resemblance to Daniel had only increased during these past months. They shared the same blue-gray eyes, thick brown hair with reddish highlights, and muscular build. Ned was the same age as Rebecca, five years younger than Daniel, but the two men now looked so much alike that from a distance, she couldn’t tell them apart. Each day, when she stood on the porch and looked out at the fields, what she saw were broad-shouldered twins toiling side by side.
She heard a thud on the porch as Jesse and Jonathan set the heavy milk pail down on the rough plank floor.
Ned looked out the door. “Go grab the hoes from the barn, boys, and we’ll get started.”
The boys clattered down the porch steps, not bothering to bring the bucket inside. Rebecca knew they were avoiding her, afraid she’d set them to work toting water or hauling wood. They relished days when they escaped the chores of women and children and worked alongside the men.
Ned turned to Daniel. “We got word last night the militia’s forming along the Carolina border. They intend to run the Cherokee back toward the mountains. There’s even talk of marching all the way to the Middle Towns and leveling them.”
Daniel’s eyes suddenly looked alive. “Who’s leading the militia?”
“Most likely, Major Waddell.”
The men stepped outside, still talking, though Rebecca could no longer hear their words. She walked to the doorway and leaned against the frame, watching their figures grow smaller as they headed to the fields. Jesse and Jonathan trailed behind like ducklings, their hoes over their shoulders. She was dismayed to see a purposefulness in Daniel’s step that hadn’t been there since their arrival in Virginia. He looked like a man who was more than ready to walk back to Carolina.
The baby arrived that fall, shortly after harvest. Daniel’s parents had headed north to Maryland months earlier, so there was no one to tend to Rebecca but Martha, who was seven months pregnant with her first child and had little experience birthing babies. As Rebecca’s labor lengthened, Martha hovered above the bed, worry etched across her face.
Daniel’s footsteps echoed on the porch planks as he paced back and forth. Between contractions, Rebecca watched the sunlight glow golden through the open doorway, then slowly dim as the sun sank below the apple trees. As her pains grew even fiercer, she saw fear in Martha’s eyes.
“Jesse,” Martha said, “Take the young’uns to my cabin and tell Ned they’ll need to stay there tonight.”
Rebecca heard Martha and Daniel have a whispered exchange on the porch, followed moments later by the sound of hoofbeats disappearing down the road.
Martha leaned over the bed and laid a damp rag on Rebecca’s forehead. “Daniel’s gone to get the midwife.”
“We didn’t think we’d need a midwife, given this is my third.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have if you had a sister who knew what she was doing.”
Rebecca gave Martha’s hand a quick squeeze, then grabbed a fold of the quilt as her entire body tightened. She longed to hear her mother’s soothing voice above her, calm and confident, keeping her safe as it had during her previous labors.
By the time the midwife hurried into the cabin, throwing off her cloak and rolling up her sleeves, Rebecca’s contractions were so strong she was barely able to keep from crying out. Daniel stepped to the side of the bed and rested a hand on her damp forehead. “Ada’s here to help.” He started to say something else, but the midwife bustled up and shooed him away.
Ada’s hands were cool as they moved across Rebecca’s rounded belly, assessing the baby’s position. Rebecca felt herself relax just a little under the midwife’s gentle touch, until, without warning, Ada pressed down forcefully. Rebecca gasped and felt a surge of pain that left her vision blurry and her hearing muffled. Only when the pain receded a bit did she realize that Ada’s hands were once again moving lightly across her belly.
The midwife nodded, satisfied. “The babe had a shoulder caught, but it won’t be long now.”
Rebecca took a deep breath as another contraction began to build. She felt as if she and the baby were cut off from the rest of the world, alone and encased in a chrysalis of pain as they labored together toward the moment when one would at last become two.
Less than an hour later, Ada placed the child, naked and crying, into Rebecca’s outstretched arms. “It’s a girl,” she said.
Giddy with relief, Rebecca counted the baby’s fingers and toes, marveling at how delicate this child was. Her first daughter was so much smaller than the boys had been as newborns. As the baby’s cries grew louder, Rebecca gathered the blanket around her. “Hush, little one,” she said. But the baby continued to cry, her breath coming in ragged gasps, as Ada stepped back and let Daniel move alongside the bed.
He was smiling, apparently pleased at the addition of a daughter to their household of boys.
