The Purchase (36 page)

The boy stared. “Why you do it?”

But Isaac owed no explanation to someone who would never understand such a circumstance. The sound of guns and screaming and horses and mules and cannons rocketing. Men with blood coming out of their mouths grabbing at nothing, calling for mamas and left-behind sweethearts. He studied the boy, who had grown so much taller. “Slaves. Wearing uniforms,” he mused.

That very day, Daniel was cooking sausages on the outside stove that sat with its surface rusting a little more with each rain. Ruth and little John had returned from rejoicing in the Lord and Daniel would feed them, as was his weekly habit. First Day, the Quakers called this respite of worship and rest, and yet he did not think of Quakers or of his past. He cared nothing for his father’s approval now, for his father had never made the journey to Lee County that might have afforded him some consolation in the loss of Daniel and the grandchildren. No consolation, no forgiveness – Daniel thought, and now his eldest son had come back in such unmanly fashion as to be hiding in the cowshed like a fugitive. And why should he not, Daniel wondered, when he expressly disobeyed my rules and beliefs? Is this not still my
land? Am I not his father? Do I not decide how we are to live? He added a chopped onion to the sausages and thought a little more on this, feeling some secret relief that Isaac was safe. Then he moved his thoughts to Benjamin, who had taken the wagon on a buying trip for the millhouse. Two weeks he’d been gone, and the millhouse would have closed except for his own ministrations with the grinding stones. How had his children come to such irresponsibility? He could not dwell for a single minute on Jemima, who tore at his heart with her vagrancy. His children were grown or growing, although the best one of them lay underground very near to the outside stove where he was so busy with sausages. To that buried one alone he spoke and he did this every week, reporting on the stray dog that had adopted them and other subjects suitable to a four-year-old. “His tail is long with a white spot at the end, which he endeavours to catch.” Only good news for Joseph, who had no way to intervene in human events, although sometimes Daniel mused about the one hundred and ten acres he considered his own and the two he had given to Benjamin. The Shoffert land was still largely unplanted, he admitted, but fallow ground made the ideal seedbed and in the coming July father and sons would stride across it, scythes moving in unison. Of course it would not be Daniel and his sons doing that. It would be Floyd and his sons who would broadcast the seeds and later rake and bind and lay out the sheaves to be flayed.

As usual, Daniel mentioned Rebecca. He looked down at the grave and then up at the apple tree that had grown so sturdily from Joseph’s flesh and spoke of Rebecca’s exemplary life, but such talk made him tearful and he soon changed the subject. “Did I mention I once saw a panther at the top of a tree in Lancaster?” he said to lighten the mood. “Someone shot at it – that I remember – and it jumped out of the tree and broke its
legs.” Here he stopped, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and looked up to see Benjamin.

“You all right, Pap?” Benjamin had been away for two weeks and now he pointed back to the family wagon in which he had just unexpectedly arrived. It had a new canvas top. “Look there! What do you see?”

Daniel saw the new top and under it a seated girl, fanning herself. He recognized her. It was Elizabeth Ransome. And here was old Daniel, cooking sausages on an outside stove and talking out loud to his buried child.

“We married each other,” Benjamin said.

Behind the wagon, Daniel saw two men, who were apparently tied to its shaft. “Who are they?” he asked suspiciously.

“Come greet your new daughter and I will explain.”

The two men were stretching and moaning and wondering if there might be water to drink.

Benjamin yelled, “Mama Ruth, come say hello to Missus Benjamin Dickinson.”

Ruth came out of the house and stood. “Married,” she said coldly, nodding at Elizabeth, who had stolen her dear Benjamin. John was called outside and Benjamin helped Elizabeth out of the wagon as if she had never put shoe to ground. When Daniel came across to her, he brushed her cheek with his beard, muttering his welcome as if it should not be overheard. Then he asked again, “Who are these men?”

Benjamin said, “Wedding gifts” as he untied them.

Daniel told John to bring water. The two exhausted men had walked behind the wagon all the way across Virginia and now they sat down hard in its shade.

With so many people to be fed, the family elected to sit outside with plates on their laps. Sausages with onions, cornbread with cream. Elizabeth fanned herself and gazed at the house as if she
had forgotten how humble it was. She looked at the sycamore trees. “We forgot to call Mary,” Daniel said, tapping his forehead with a finger. “In all the excitement, we forgot to send for her.”

John seized this opportunity to absent himself. And what about Isaac? he thought, pushing away from the table angrily. He had been down to the shed to see his brother for himself, finding him thinner and dustier. Isaac smelled like the animals now and made sorry jokes about his adventures, but he was the eldest and ought to be here.

Once John had gone off to get Mary, Daniel found his voice. “I’ll have no slave on my land. You know that,” he told Benjamin.

“And does this holy edict include Floyd and Cherry and their sons, who plow and plant that land for you?”

Daniel examined Benjamin as if to find a visible flaw, reminding himself that there were words not to be said. He had taken ownership of the slave family only months before when Michael Shoffert had needed to sell them. It was an act of decency meant to keep the little family together, but Benjamin would not understand.

Then John was returning with Mary, driving her in her own cart. As they alighted, Mary ran to Elizabeth to greet her and then turned to her father, speaking in her quiet voice, pleading with him to welcome Isaac to the meal.

Daniel remembered that she, too, was his child still. “Thy food is there to be eaten,” he said.

Benjamin was pulling his half-brother by the arm. “John, I know you are a boy yet,” he said, “and too young to be taken seriously, but come over here to the shade. I have an offer to make.” He took John’s plate away, leading him into the clearing.

Mary wanted to ask her father about Wiley. Isaac was back but not Wiley. How could she learn about Wiley’s whereabouts? If he had been taken prisoner, what could they know of it? She
watched Elizabeth watching Benjamin under the trees talking to John and remembered the happiness of new marriage. “You are Isaac’s father,” she said. “This is his home and you must forgive him.” She did not mention Wiley.

Daniel rose. He turned and went into his house, closing the door on her pleas.

In the shade of the twin sycamores, Benjamin was laughing. “Remember our fort?”

“I do.” John remembered the time Benjamin had tied him to a stake and thrown arrows at him.

“Good. Your memory is what I require. For our new enterprise.” Benjamin did not want to sound proud, but how could it be helped.

“Thank you, but Pap says I am to study. It is his plan, that I should use –”

“You should use your fine ability at figures,” Benjamin said.

“But I must wait for employment until I am older. Pap says that –”

“Do you remember Mister Franklin? What
he
said?”

“That time is money?” John knew it was Benjamin’s favourite quote.

“The point is that the more you give of yourself, the more you receive. Pap would agree with that.”

John thought Daniel would have said that the more one receives, the more one must give. He said, “Let Isaac help you. Give him welcome. Our father will still not speak to him.”

“Brother, this is a great chance for you. I need a bookkeeper. Those two men over there know everything about the cotton plant.”

“Which none of
us
knows in the least.” John’s voice was small.

“We have always and so far known nothing of anything,” Benjamin conceded, putting an arm around John. “And just look. I have a wife and two acres and a mill and two workers. I have property, brother, and I’m going to have more, and you will be my partner.”

“Isaac is the oldest,” John murmured, shaking his head.

“It is not age I need but faith. Lend me your faith, little brother, and I will make us wealthy as kings.”

I
saac had gathered a bunch of cornflowers, tied them together with a piece of string, dusted his hat, and walked away from his father’s land after three weeks in that shed. Soon he found himself on the porch of the Fox house, where he stood for an instant, then knocked. It was a hot day and Wiley’s leather breeches were sticking to his legs. He tugged at them and waited, over-warm, uncomfortable. But his little sister was here somewhere and even if the sun beat down straight on his head and the skinny poplar tree in the yard gave not an ounce of shade he would stand here and wait for her.

“I heard tell you were back,” cried Jemima gladly as she opened the door wide. She had come into the worn light of the hall from someplace else. She was dishevelled, her hair uncombed as if she had been asleep at midday. He handed her the flowers and put his arms around her, thinking of Rafe, wondering if she was safe with him.

Jemima said, “This is where I live now. Papa won’t come. Nobody will. I am in disgrace.”

“I came.”

She sniffed at the flowers, which had no smell.

“And look at you … mistress of this big house!” Isaac looked down the hall, at the far end of which was an open door leading to a back porch.

“Mistress of nothing,” she said and took a step in the direction of the front door. “We can talk outside.”

“Can you not talk in your own house?”

“Oh, it’s not mine.” Jemima cradled the cornflowers and stepped out and along a path that led through high grass toward a kennel full of barking hounds. Isaac paused once to look back, knowing that his father had once come here with the body of Jester Fox. Jemima would not remember that time, she had been so small, but he remembered everything – even the smell of his father’s wet woollen coat after he came back with the wagon saying Jester Fox was killed, which was a strange word to use for an accident. Now Jemima led him on past the hounds, who had set up a howling. “Shall we let them come along with us?”

“Lord no! They’re no company for a human being.” Jemima pressed at her skirt, which was torn at the hem. A few brittle leaves blew across the grass.

Looking at her, Isaac had an idea. “I wonder if there might be … I’ve been thinking. You know I’m good with livestock. Can you find a place for me here? I could build a small hut on the far side of some field.”

“I told you, I am mistress of nothing.”

“You have a husband. A house. Fields. Servants. Your childhood friend is one of them.”

Jemima held the blue flowers up to her face. “I have no husband,” she said.

“I think I could help Bry. I know a place where he could be free.”

“You want him to run off and get savaged by those hounds?”