The Purchase (6 page)

Daniel had retorted that Ruth Boyd might soon be in a different state of commitment to him.

“So thee would marry the girl to free her, is that it?”

“May I not offer refuge?” Daniel had said it brightly.

“There is a long list of people to be saved and half of them are female.”

Nevertheless, Daniel had made his announcement at First Day Meeting in Brandywine among Rebecca’s relatives and friends. “I shall marry Ruth Boyd,” he had said, speaking in the midst of a silence that might otherwise have lasted through the morning. His father-in-law had opened his eyes. His mother-in-law, on the other side of the Meeting House, had sobbed audibly. One of the Elders had cleared his throat. Then there was a hush so protracted that a bee could be heard outside in the dying flowers. A dog on a distant street had barked.

Daniel looked down at the rolled-up form on the ground and thought of the girl on the bed inside his lean-to. He remembered the conviction he had felt that First Day morning when both his inner and outer voices had been sudden and clear. He had been sure of himself for that narrow crack in time, sure for an hour or a little more that he had been directed by his inner light, his own connection to God. Now he stepped over the bare feet that protruded from the blanket, adjusted his shoulders, which were sore from pulling the reins, and tried hard to find that conviction again, but the lamp he had always felt like a beacon in his breast was as unlit as the sky overhead.

“W
hat is that a book of?”

Daniel was perched on the tongue of the wagon, drinking a mug of black coffee and licking his finger as he turned each page of a manual. He closed it so that Ruth could see the cover and said tiredly, “It explains the ways to survive the wilderness by following the principles of science.”

“Don’t the Red Indians survive in this wilderness?” Ruth leaned over to see if there were pictures.

“Savages survive but not efficiently.” Then he thought it only fair to add, “About Indians, it says, for example, that the women take sticks and off they go to poke the ground to raise up the weeds. The weeds, after a day or two, dry out and they burn them for ashes. Then with the little sticks, they make holes and they put in a few grains of corn and cover them up with the ashes. It’s luck if they do not starve since they never invented even a plow.” Daniel picked up the manual, hoping to discourage further conversation.

“
We
have no plow,” Ruth pointed out.

Daniel said, “Today I shall lay down lines for the house.” He snapped the manual shut and handed Ruth his empty mug.

That afternoon, he and the boy, Onesimus, began to work together, Daniel reading directions from the manual and the boy using the few tools Daniel had brought with him from
Pennsylvania. It was the neighbour, Frederick Jones, who furnished the iron body level so that walls and sills would stand straight. He loaned out his finishing saw and told Daniel that the Virginia kitchen could wait. “Best to cook in the fireplace,” he advised, “to also warm house.”

Daniel had in his possession a heavy adz, a broad axe, and a good wood mallet of five pounds weight. “Buy you a moulding plane,” Frederick advised. “I have none as my boy Wiley left it to ruin in rain.” He made a sound from his German past.

“My efforts must go instead to earning two hundred dollars and not to spend anything,” Daniel replied. “For the return of my mare.”

Frederick Jones studied the back of his hands. “A good horse for an ungrown boy was not good trade.”

In the forest, the ungrown boy was cutting and hauling logs, bedevilled by his fear of snakes and surrounded by the strangling limbs of water oaks and cypress trees. Off and on there was a light fall of snow or rain to increase his misery, but by midweek there were three straight trees cut down and stripped of their bark. Each of them had been pushed and shoved and heaved. There was only Mulberry to do the hauling afterward and she was still slightly lame. The boy kept saying one word over and over. “Mule,” he said, “mule,” while the lame horse pulled and dragged, slipping and stumbling on the lumpy, soggy ground as the boy also slipped and stumbled and coaxed and threatened and kept an eye on the vines that hung out of the trees. He had seen a man killed by a snake. Viper, it was. Work of the dickens. He thought of the faraway farm, where he had been in charge of pigs. He thought of the way his brother had been sent out to the fields and put to picking and lugging and hauling and how certain words had escaped like sweat and covered him in the sorrow of whips. He must not make the same mistake, he
decided, as he drove Mulberry through the swamp and his eyes darted up at the swirling branches.

At the clearing, wrapped in his Quaker coat, Daniel thought about a foundation for his house. They would not have time to build a solid one of stone. If Miss Patch were here, such a thing might be possible, he said to himself. They could pull heaps of flat stones from the creekbed and pile them up in no time while Mulberry hauled up logs. But the scientific decision at this point was to put the floor up on rock legs with a crawl space underneath. He would anchor the house to a sturdy chimney, which would also require stones, but they could look for those when the walls were finished and he had redeemed Miss Patch.

He did not wonder how he would come by the two hundred dollars he needed because the Lord would somehow provide. The creek would provide its stones, his neighbour would provide his aid, and the Lord would surely reward his own efforts to do what he had it in his heart to do. There were fine, round boulders up near the rapids, but that was beyond his property line. For now, he would collect flat pieces of limestone that could be piled under the sills of his house like legs. For now, he would muster the boy he had bought for just such a purpose, although he must not have known it at the time. When Simus appeared, driving Mulberry and the first log, Daniel asked him to set to work with the axe. “Hew off the top of the log and cut notches in the underside every arm’s width. If you would, please.”

No one had spoken to the boy in that tone even once in his life and he looked at Daniel suspiciously. He had helped put up the tiny cabin he and his brother had lived in on the farm, although he would not admit to it. He had put up the cabin and he had watched other men doing the same. His mother had lived there such a short time that he was reminded of his sorrow with every cut of the axe. On the flattened topside of the first log, he cut
notches to accommodate the long narrow sleepers that would stretch across the width of the house, remembering the day he and his brother had tried to do the same thing with small, dull knives. His mother had been singing; he remembered that too. As he worked, a mat of chips grew around him so that the children came running over to play. Even Mary skipped through the wood chips, taking Jemima’s hands to swing her around in the air. Isaac threw the chips over his head and watched them cascade down while Benjamin laughed at the sunlight flashing off flakes he called daystars.

The purchased boy watched the others play. He stood with his mouth turned at the corners and his eyes glued on the children and thought of his brother, who had sometimes raced him to the pond where they looked for frogs and caught fish. His brother had taught him to build a snare. Lying quiet on the ground, they had waited for rabbit and grouse. His brother had taught him patience, but now his stomach was reacting to his fear of snakes or to the change in his diet and he left the children and went off by himself. His stomach ached and each log must be brought up from that timber lot where there could be anything alive in the trees and on the wet ground. He was cold. His shoes had no ties and came off in the mud. Time after time, he went to the horse, where she was standing, and took up her reins. We is the same, he would have said to her, if he had thought to speak, but the boy did not voice his thoughts. Instead he made noises, clucked, whimpered, hummed a single note, and felt a grieving sadness whenever he watched the innocent children play.

While the children scattered wood chips, Daniel paced the perimeter of his future house, counting off facts. Walls not of oak – it takes too long to cure – but of poplar or chestnut. Floor of oak cut at the old of the moon. In summer the bark comes off of itself – but now we must hack it. Cure the joists up off
the ground until they are bone hard and joint them to the sleepers, the number of which depends on the length of the building. Cut them six inches shorter than the width of the house. Hew them off on each of four sides. Like the slave, he was driven by fear. He needed a house but spring was nearly upon them and he should soon be planting. What, he wondered, had he done with his life? His childhood had been spent in the Quaker community of Lancaster, where his father had been a mason. Daniel had wanted to work at a desk. The chance to sit in a chair all day had seemed cultivated. So he had learned nothing of tools, nothing of farming, nothing of creating out of nothing. What he had learned was the business of writing bills of sale and deeds.

Mary put Jemima down and went to Simus. She had seen him watching her. She had felt ashamed. “How do you do that?”

“Nothin only ta make this axe chop down.” Simus wiped his wet face with his hand.

Mary saw his predicament. If the work looked too easy, he would be given more of it. But he had taken that risk for her.

O
n February 10, the six acres were finally surveyed. The day was cold, but Daniel woke up feverish and built up the fire, deciding to make enough coffee for the surveyors. There was a thick fog on the ground and he went behind the lean-to to check on the boy, who was still asleep. The boy had the habit of wrapping himself in the blanket he’d been given and then burying himself in a pile of leaves. That morning the pile was covered with a light dusting of snow. Daniel threw the coffee Mary had ground the night before into a pot of water and let it boil. Then he took a mug full of the drink and went out to walk his land, although the light snow had crusted and the fog lay heavy and he could hardly see his way through the mist. Taking careful steps, the walk took over an hour, by which time the
coffee in his mug was in his belly and the sun had brought its rosy light. His land was going to be surveyed and his house was going to be built and he who had never slept in the open until four months ago would again have a proper roof.

He followed the creek, picking his way around fallen logs that were hidden in the snow and descending the slope to the rapids, which lay several poles past his boundary. From there, he looked back, as a prince would survey a kingdom. Without moving an inch, Daniel could count black walnut, hickory, sugar maple, poplar, chestnut, and oak. He knew them even without the advertisement of leaves. There were sycamores at the house site. There were those mysterious cypresses down past the timber lot. There were mayapples and mulberries and there was marsh that would turn to meadow in the spring. He thought of the seeds he had brought and was sick at the waste, but for this hour of walking and drinking warm coffee, he felt the swell of a landowner’s pride. Never before had this small piece of land had any meaning at all, but he would imbue it with purpose.
Surveyed six acres on Feb 10 by virtue of entry made Dec. 4, 1798
, the Lee County Deed Book read later that day.
Land warrant 684 dated Sept 6th
. Daniel remembered the purchase of that warrant from a veteran in Brandywine. The Elders would not have approved, nor would Rebecca, but he had bought it from the veteran who had received it as a war payment and he had laid it in the camphor trunk he’d made as a wedding gift for his Quaker wife. Laying up treasure, an affront to the Lord.