The Purchase by Linda Spalding

Author:Linda Spalding [Spalding, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780771079375
Publisher: Pantheon
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Mary kept to herself, avoiding everyone but Bett. Without daily lessons to attend, Benjamin got up to mischief of one sort or another while Isaac went off to the woods with Frederick’s son, Wiley Jones. Older than Isaac by five years, Wiley was teaching him how to hunt squirrel. The two of them sometimes surprised Ruth with an offering for the iron pot and Isaac, forbidden by Daniel to touch Wiley’s gun, had learned how to skin the animals and preserve the pelts.

Jemima, old enough now to help Ruth in the house, wandered out to the lean-to, where she could be close to Bett’s child, teaching him nursery rhymes and counting games and ignoring Joseph’s cot that sat empty by the fireplace.

Mary spent her time stretched out on the lean-to bed counting again. First Jester Fox came upon us, she told herself. After me walking down to see Simus in my indigo dress. After dropping my old dress on the floor that Simus made. After being told to watch the children because a pig was to be killed. And one of them shall not fall without your Father … . Fathers could not be counted on.

It was Bett’s child who kept Mary breathing as she counted back. She counted as she rocked him in her arms. She counted as she fed him his first corn cake. She counted as she taught him to spell his own name: B-R-Y. She counted as she lay by his side trying to sleep.

One night Bett woke her from a nightmare. “Come out and walk with me,” she said, pulling Mary’s arm. “I’ll show you where the seng roots hide so that when you’re an old woman, you can be out in the woods leaning on your cane, all bent over collecting them, getting wealthy and fat.”

Mary rolled over and smiled in half sleep. “We will be picking them together,” she said, smoothing her hair back and rubbing at her face. For two years and more they had lived as sisters, raising Bett’s child, and she had been comforted by the feel of Bett’s hand on her arm and the sound of her soft, low voice. She no longer walked in the woods and she did not want to leave the lean-to now, in the middle of the night. The crack of a branch, the cry of an animal … But she got off the bed dutifully and reached for her cape as Bett took her hard by the arm and did not let her pull away even as they went past the meadow and down to the dreaded timber lot. It was long past midnight and the mosquitoes were thick and Bry had to be covered with a blanket as Bett carried him on her back. Swatting at mosquitoes, stepping through the underbrush, Mary unbraided her hair. “The nippers are going after me.” She slapped at her face.

“You should forgive your father, Mary.”

“Will the nippers stop biting me then?”

“Perhaps they will. Your father is grieving, as you are.

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