The Purchase (37 page)

Isaac took her hand and pulled her down in the grass beside him. He let his legs sprawl in Wiley’s hot leather pants. He put his head back and set it down on Jemima’s lap. “Pap won’t
speak to me either. We are both outcasts. Find me something to do here, will you? Please. I have no place to go.” He began to tell her a little of his journey.

A
few months later, Missus Dougherty was serving coffee and biscuits with butter and jam to her usual guests. She was saying that she had been the first to visit Benjamin Dickinson’s rented house those months ago when they had settled into married life. She was explaining that it was furnished with various pieces from her, along with a horsehair divan and a set of china from the Ransome family. “Silver candlesticks too,” she announced. “All very pretty, although I wonder if the father will mind his son growing cotton in order to keep such a wife.”

“It’s a backbreaking crop,” Missus Craig agreed.

Missus Dougherty rolled her eyes heavenward. “I was referring to the keeping of slaves such a crop requires.”

“Isn’t the mill adequate for Benjamin’s income?” asked Missus Sharpe. “He is sole owner.”

“Not exactly. I am told that he has taken young John as a partner,” Missus Dougherty said disapprovingly. “Although he is called to be a preacher.”

“And the older brother home from the war,” said Missus Jones, studying her cup, to keep her eyes unreadable. She was thinking, But not my son.

“
Partnership
is a loose term,” mused Missus Craig, who was longing to ask about Mary but was sensitive to the feelings of Missus Jones.

“I believe Isaac, the oldest boy, is working for Rafe Fox,” Missus Sharpe noted, “who, as you may know, is also keeping the young daughter.”

There was general assent. Heads nodding, shaking. But what could be said about a situation so catastrophic? Rafe Fox, son of the widow, taking an unmarried girl into his house. A young Quaker girl, sister of Mary and stepchild of Ruth. It was best to leave the details to the imagination, for speaking of them would only make them worse.

“Is this Missus Dickinson’s butter?” Missus Sharpe then asked. “It seems –”

“Not today,” said Missus Dougherty, with a lift of her chin.

At that very moment, Elizabeth was sitting with John in her small rented house. It was owned by the blacksmith and sat at the edge of Jonesville near his place of business. Benjamin had given his half-brother certain duties, and now Elizabeth was sipping coffee with him as if they were contemporaries exchanging family news. It was thrilling to John, this new adulthood.

He practised particular postures while sitting across from Elizabeth and then berated himself for vanity. His father was of course displeased with him, but he was trying to keep up with his studies while also helping Benjamin. He was helping at the mill, keeping the books, and running errands between his brother’s seeded bottom land and the small rented house, where lived Elizabeth, who always made him welcome and was happy to entertain him with stories of her former life in Richmond. She told him about her sisters, her friends, her cousins, and the social events they had attended while he listened as if she were reading to him from a richly descriptive book. Today, while
she talked, he focused on her hands, which held a bag of silk threads and an embroidery hoop, although she rarely put needle to cloth. Once she had unfolded a scene of flowers and birds and fruits, an entire mythology. “Of course they are not real in the least,” she had laughed, “for I am quite without training in natural science.” She had been taught to read, to play the piano, and to speak a little French. “You yourself are reading Virgil,” she said now. “Or so your brother has told me. And I believe he is just the tiniest bit provoked by that.” The afternoon was hot and her right hand went for a moment to the back of her neck and lifted her hair. In the bottomland, the wedding workers would be hoeing and separating delicate plants. Elizabeth watched a blush crawl up John’s neck.

“Our
Aeneid
is lost.” John looked at his feet, which were awkwardly crossed in front of him. “It seems that Jemima may have taken it with her and there is no way now to get it back. But there are the Georgics, which I study for the poetry.”

“I wonder that you do not find it in your heart to visit your sister.”

“It is my father’s decree.”

“Perhaps Jemima would not have run away with Mister Fox if your father had fewer decrees. And now your brother Isaac is living there too. Mister Fox is stealing your family.”

John winced.

“I think Isaac heroic,” Elizabeth proclaimed. “This is a terrible war to have fought. They’ve set fire to our capital, for heaven’s sake. Benjamin would join up but for the mill and the promise he made to your father.” Elizabeth turned her face to the window. “Another decree. He is not to be a patriot.”

John congratulated himself for having the strength of mind to disobey his father in at least one thing. His partnership with Benjamin proved that he had an eye on his future. Virgil was no
guarantee of employment, after all, and he liked the making of cider and the keeping of accounts. Also, perhaps, orcharding. He had a pamphlet that said that scratching the bark of an apple tree will hasten its bloom, that beating it will bruise the layer just beneath the bark and check the descent of sap, forcing an early bearing. Benjamin had a small orchard that had come from the seeds of Joseph’s tree, and John thought that, with care, it could begin producing fruit in summer and finish long after the cold season had arrived. He would make sure that Floyd and his boys used all care in picking – never snapping off the stems, which causes the onset of rot in the fruit, and never jiggling the apples in moving them, which causes bruises. His father would come to see that his studies had only broadened his outlook. John sat back in the overstuffed chair, feeling very adult, now that he was thirteen, and asked Elizabeth if she had many visitors.

“Oh but no one comes here,” she said with a pout in her voice. “Missus Dougherty has pronounced me too grand, which is only the fault of my candlesticks, and now no one will tap at my door. But do not, for a single minute, concern yourself,” said the young bride. “Missus Biblethumper may think me worldly, but I am humble enough to do without her.”

“I’m sure she does not think any such thing. She has always been helpful to our family,” John said loyally.

“In what respect, I wonder? She seems to have severed relations with your mama.”

Elizabeth was wearing a lavender frock, linen, with grey silk trim. The skirt seemed fuller to John than other skirts and the waist above it child slim. He rearranged his feet. “She started my mother in business. And she now encourages me in my calling.” He gave the words utmost dignity.

Elizabeth’s laugh was bell-like. “Oh, I know. Benjamin once introduced himself to my cousin as a Quaker and then told an
acquaintance of mine that he has not a jot of faith. It is your age and the result of your father’s confused beliefs that leads you to spiritualism.”

John was sure that his father had never been confused. As for himself, at this moment he longed to fall to his knees. He felt the surge of faith in his throat that presaged another vision and he touched his face to be sure it was still part of him, looking at Elizabeth, whose skin just above her bodice was the colour of clotted cream. It is the coffee makes me shaky, he thought, but he could hear, as if that old man were standing behind him, the voice of Reverend Ansley, who had spoken at the campground two Sundays back.

The reverend’s tones had expanded and contracted, and John had felt a vaporous leap of something at his back. Perhaps his mother’s angel was finally returned. Even now, he could come under that spell in a matter of minutes and yet his loins ached, his hands trembled. A bead of perspiration ran down his face as he looked at Elizabeth. His brother’s wife. He watched her hair catch the afternoon light, and it was like opening his eyes under water. He pushed up from his chair and felt his way to the hall, where he took hold of his hat. If taking coffee with Elizabeth could so unhinge him, how could he understand God’s will or serve Him? His trembling hand reached for the door, but Elizabeth was laughing again, having followed him into the hall. “I know such a scrumptious story about one young man who was called to preach. Just listen and tell me if you sympathize, for he was out walking on a dark road one evening when he heard a voice overhead telling him to
go-o-o preach go-o-o preach
.” Elizabeth waved her bare arms in the air. “There are truly mad people who hear voices, you know,” she confided.

S
wallows rushed in and out of the barn with tiny grubs for their nestlings. I should be like them, Jemima thought as she entered the dark, assailed by the smell of dung and hay. Why am I not? “Rafe?” She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them wide to adjust to the lack of light. She grabbed up her skirt and moved through the clutter that surrounded her – a broken scythe, a winnower, Eb’s plow, various tools she could not name. “Ra-aafe?”

He stood in a stall with his hands in a pail. Water glistened on the withers of his horse and pooled in the straw at his feet.

“I need my sister,” Jemima said, coming close to him. “I truly need her. She doesn’t even know about … this.” She put her hand on her round belly. “She’ll know what to do when my time comes.”

“Jemima, listen to me. Horses, pigs, even people have babies.”

She was running her hands up and down her arms. “Just help me make peace with my people, Rafe. Let Bry go home and they will forgive you. I know they will. It is not much to ask.” She touched his unshaved face. “They think you stole him.”

“They think I stole you.”

Jemima sank to her knees. She was tired. The baby was weighing on body and mind. All day, she had been walking and thinking.

Rafe said, “If they want Bry, they can make an offer. He has more value now than he did when he came here.”

“It’s his freedom I want. Can you not make me a gift of it? I promise I will never ask for another thing in all my life.”

Rafe stroked her hair. “If I give him up, I have to replace him. Don’t you understand simple economics? What the devil has come over you, lately? Let your pa make me an offer. Or your brother. He’s been playing cards, making wagers. He’s rich. Bry is fourteen years old, iron strong. He’s going to be somebody’s slave. Let him be Benjamin’s if you like. For the right price.”

Jemima’s eyes were suddenly dark, which made her face seem pale, almost gaunt. Pressing against Rafe, she pulled his hand up to her face and took one of his fingers into her mouth. It was something he liked. It had once been a signal between them. “Please let him go.” She looked off to the house, to the porch with its chairs, where she had sometimes rocked herself into an afternoon sleep during the last long year. She looked at the field between the house and barn, at the corn, which was soon to be cut, when even her meeting place with Bry would be exposed. She looked into herself, where her child lay in a curl, opening eyes that were as big as they would ever be, naked, hairless, unloved. Was it Rafe’s? If not, Bry would soon hang from a tree.