The Fields Page 2

  CHAPTER TWO

  FIRST COME

  IT was out of the ordinary for Sayward to be abed and down. One bed she had up on the loft boards. That was for overnight company, like when it got too late for somebody to go home. Her brother Wyitt’s bed she had out in the shanty. That’s where he wanted to be, save when he came in the cabin for rations. Achsa’s bed was gone. Where it used to lay, Sayward had a stool now and the box for fancies the bound boy had made her out of hickory bark taken from all around the tree, the outside shaved off and with puncheons on the end to set it up on.

  Her and Portius’s bed was the only one left down the ladder. This bed Sayward had made new in the fall. First she littered fresh-fallen leaves on the bark she had spread on the tamped dirt floor. Then she laid ticking she had sewed up herself and stuffed with corn shucks and wheat straw. Between the yarn blankets on top of this Sayward from time to time took her ease. Genny and Mrs. Covenhoven were here looking after her. Now and then they put a fresh log on the fire or fetched water in from the run, letting the door stand open so they could see. It felt good between gripes for Sayward to lie still and let herself be waited on hand and foot for one time in her life.

  This cabin, she told herself looking around at the smoke-stained logs, had seen death and marrying and the whole kit of the family together at the start. But this was the first time birth had ever come thumping on the door. Only, Portius wasn’t here. Now wasn’t that a strange notion, minding that your man wasn’t around the night your and his first young one was coming in the world? If she had any sense, she wouldn’t let it bother her any more than these here cramps. And she didn’t mind them since they came from a little body who was closer than her own heart a beating, and who just wanted out.

  Since Portius wasn’t here, she would as soon he didn’t show up for a while. It was a bad enough night to get through, with her sister Genny on tenterhooks like she was the one that had to go through birthing. Sayward had always heard say that the first born was the hardest to come. For a spell she hardly knew where she was at. Then she heard a fine crying like a rabbit makes when a “link” pulls it out of its log.

  “It’s a little boy,” she heard Mrs. Covenhoven say in that sweet, mealy-mouthed way she kept for talk about babies and dominies and the time she and Big John got married.

  It went through Sayward’s mind that now she couldn’t call her baby Sulie like she had made out, after her own tyke of a sister lost in the woods and never laid eyes on again. No, she would have to rake up a man’s name to call him by.

  “Light up a splinter so I kin see him,” she said.

  Mrs. Covenhoven gave the squalling little spindle-shanked stranger to Genny. Then she lighted a strip of shellbark at the hearth and held it so it would drop no fire on that tender body. Sayward looked him all over a long time, and the sweat tasted sweet in her mouth. Never had Portius let drop a word to her about his folks back in the Bay State, and nary a word would she ask him. But now she could see what they looked like, for this man child of hers was no Luckett or Powelly or anybody on her side of the house she had ever laid eyes on. No, this must be a Wheeler with his big nose already and sharp eyes hardly open yet and eye bones slanting down on the sides like Captain Loudon who lived in his brick mansion house along the Conestoga. She wouldn’t be surprised if some relation to this little rascal with such a nose, eyes and eye bones wasn’t sitting upon a chair with a back reading a book in the Bay State right now.

  Sayward felt she would like to sleep, but she couldn’t for watching Genny and the baby. Oh, that mite of a pink, new body with its little bitty toes and fingers, and its weak eyes squinting from the fire, was like the little Lord Jesus to Genny. She washed the blood off and greased it and wrapped it up and rocked it backward and forward at her own childless breasts. It made her look like before she was married. Then she could float along a path light as milkweed down. Wasn’t it a shame Genny never had babies of her own! She’d be like Mary in the Good Book, white as a magnoly and so mortal beautiful you could hardly stand to look at her.

  Portius never did come home that night. In the morning Wyitt came piddling in from his shanty with Will Beagle. Oh, they knew what was going on in the cabin last night. You could tell by the way they held back.

  “Will come down and stayed with me last night,” Wyitt said. That, Sayward reckoned, was to mean something though she didn’t know as yet what it was.

  Soon as Genny saw them she lifted the long bundle from out of the sugar trough. Then she came up, holding the little face at her neck and rocking her upper parts softly.

  “Who d’ye reckon come to the cabin last night?” she cooed.

  The bound boy just stood staring at Genny. She made a picture standing there slim and white with that soft bundle held up to her. A stranger might have guessed how the bound boy had been sweet on her long before she married Louie. But never would she have him. He was too young for her, Genny claimed.

  “Don’t you want to see a little strange body not a day old yit?” she coaxed.

  “He’s no stranger to me,” Sayward put in warmly.

  “Oh, he’s the smartest little old young ’un you ever did see,” Genny praised, and folded down the blanket.

  At the face Genny uncovered and turned to him, the bound boy looked speechless.

  “Face looks like wild cherry pulp squeezed dry,” Wyitt came out, disappointed.

  “Yes, and yours looked the same when you was little for I seen it,” Sayward told him.

  “Don’t you want somethin’ better’n that to lay it in?” Will Beagle asked.

  “Oh, I reckon he kin git along till he outgrows it,” Sayward said.

  “I could make him a fine cherry cradle,” the bound boy promised. “I got a block of red cherry a dryin’ under shed roof right now. This is the way I’d cut it out.” He dropped to a knee and with one hand began drawing with his finger on the hard dirt floor of the cabin. Oh, he could make anything with his hands he wanted to. Staying right there on one knee he kept figuring out the master points of that cradle, acquainting them as to how he’d cut out the parts, smooth and join them together. He might have stayed down there looking up at Sayward all day, telling where he cut the tree, whose was the best cradle he ever saw and how he could improve on it, if Genny hadn’t called him and Wyitt to their hot mush.

  Soon as that was down, Wyitt got up to go, so Will had to get up from his stool, too. But he didn’t go. Half way to the door he stopped. He stood there, clumsy like, and Sayward knew that either he or Wyitt would finish what Wyitt started to say at the start.

  “I just come over last night to tell you something for Portius,” he said. “But Wyitt reckoned it was no time to give you bother.”

  “Where’s Portius at?” Genny put in sharply.

  “He said he had to go off on business,” the bound boy said. “He told me to tell you, Saird, he hoped you and Genny could make out till he got back.”

  “Where’d he go to?” Sayward asked from her bed.

  “He had to go to the territory seat,” the bound boy answered. Then he got out fast as he could.

  So he went to the territory seat! Sayward lay there and her legs felt cold in her bed. Now wasn’t that just like a man, running off when he knew he was going to be pappy to a young one! Like he was the one that had to go through anything! Why, he was scared to come home, that’s what he was. He had run from this house the night he found he had a wife to sleep with. It took him a while to get used to that. Now it would take him another while to get used to being a pappy and having a young one to dandle on his knee.

  What did he have to go down yonder to Chillicothe for? Now was the time he ought to take care of himself, when he had a babe to live for. It hadn’t much danger to a master woods-runner and boatman like Jake Tench, but Portius was helpless and innocent in the woods as a settlement body. He would never even carry a gun. Oh, it had no Indian trouble around here as yet. Not out in the open anyways. But it was a coming. They weren’t satisfied
with the treaty at Greenville any more. They claimed too many whites were coming in the country.

  The longer she thought about Portius, the more dark and bloody stories kept sneaking out from the back of her mind. She recollected Wilse Miller who had joked about his long red queue. “Well, if they get mine,” he said, “they won’t need a lantern to see by in the night time.” And that Connecticut Yankee up in the Firelands who said, “I had my wife cut mine too short to make it worth their while.” But he had lost his bristles just as quick as Wilse Miller his queue. And neither of them had a finer head of hair than Portius, thick and briery and always tied with his lawyer ribbon. Savages would itch to get their bloody hands on that.

  “I don’t know as I kin wait till he gits back,” Genny said.

  “Now don’t you fret, Gin,” Sayward told her. “You go back when you made out to. I kin take keer of myself and what I kain’t do, Wyitt kin help me.”

  The days went by and she heard nothing of Portius. Settler folk, one or the other, stopped most every day to see the baby. Where was Portius? Wasn’t he home? Didn’t he see his own young one yet, they wanted to know. Oh, they said little more about him right out, but Sayward could tell what they thought. Savages had no pity on a man because he was pappy to a young one. They’d have no pity on that young one itself. Jary used to tell of the little girl in Pennsylvany who ran from the corn patch when she seen the red devils coming. “Run, Janie, run!” her mam had cried to her from the cabin. “Run, Janie, run!” the front Indian mimicked as he overtook her and fetched down his tomahawk on that child’s tender head.

  It was a good while as days go till she got news of Portius. And then Wyitt’s hound, Put, fetched the first word. She was long since up and around when she heard Put carry on. She knew it couldn’t be Wyitt home from mauling rails already. Besides the step was too loud and firm for Wyitt’s moccasins. It was a stern boot she heard. She had heard it before, and she wouldn’t have believed the good feeling that ran along the riffles of her blood. Before he could pull the latchstring, she opened the door, and there stood Portius. His long surtout coat had been ripped by the brush and his stovepipe beaver hat looked sorry. He came in slowly, like company in his own cabin, bussing her on the cheek like strangers or great folks did when they had been away.

  This was something Sayward had waited long hours to see, her man and his young one laying eyes on each other for the first time. She had changed the baby only a short while before. The sugar trough she had set up on its end by the fire to dry, and till then she had laid the babe in their bed. He was there now, looking up with those sharp brown eyes he had, a wondering who was this stranger man a coming in their cabin. But if Portius saw anything out of the ordinary, he would give no notice.

  “Are you well?” he asked for something to say, and turned to take off his surtout and hang it on its peg with his beaver on top.

  “I feel hearty,” Sayward said, “cam” as she could.

  “Anyone here for me?” he rumbled in his deep lawyer voice.

  “Yes they was,” she told him.

  “Who was that?”

  “Hain’t you noticed somethin’ in the cabin since you went away?”

  He turned his head to throw at her a quick, sharp look from his gray-green eyes. But he wouldn’t look at the bed.

  “I sent Will Beagle over before I went,” he told her.

  “I don’t mean Will Beagle,” Sayward said.

  He gave her another look as if to say, let’s leave it at that, and walked firmly by the bed as if nothing could make him look down in it.

  “I have important news for you,” he declared.

  Now what could that be, Sayward pondered.

  “I kain’t imagine,” she said.

  “The convention has ratified the constitution!” he told her, fetching out the words with feeling and power. “I was present at Chillicothe and witnessed it. I heard the speeches and saw the document signed. Look out of the window, Sayward. This isn’t the Northwest territory you see. You now live in Ohio, one of the states of the Federal Union. Everywhere I passed on the way back citizens are enthusiastic. I predict, Sayward, that if the tide of emigration holds, we shall have up here along the river our own small empire of prosperous fields and farms. And that means a new county and our own seat of justice and government!”

  Sayward kept her eyes down. If he wanted to let on that nothing more important than that had happened to him and her, she could play at it too. It looked like he had only come back so he could tell her what he saw. He was warming up to it more all the time, marching slowly back and forward on the hard dirt floor. And now he was holding forth on the politics and government of this wilderness of woods and stump patches. His rich voice rang back from the logs and loft boards till all of a sudden his young one in bed began to get afeared at his shouts and cried out. At first Portius gave no heed. But that little mite of his wouldn’t be drowned out. He had his own opinions, and he argued back, getting redder and redder and howling his head off till his pappy couldn’t make out he wasn’t there any more but had to turn and look at this rival in his wife’s bed who dared to shout him down. The worst of it was that Sayward had laid him on Portius’s side, at the very place where Portius was wont to lie. Oh, that was a picture, Sayward told herself, her Bay State man, who knew the law backwards and forward, not knowing what to make of his first-born kicking and bawling and taking his pappy’s place in bed.

  “Hain’t you something to say to him?” she asked.

  Portius gave her a quick, deep, almost panic-stricken look from his fine eyes. Oh, he was wise with books and learning and what the country should do and what it shouldn’t. But he didn’t know how to be a pappy.

  “Kain’t you say what you think of him?” Sayward helped out.

  “Is it male or female?” Portius cleared his throat.

  “It’s a man child, like you,” Sayward said proudly.

  “Well, I should say,” Portius hemmed and hawed, “that legally he could be arrested, confined, brought to trial and fined for appropriating a bed that did not belong to him, and for disturbing the peace in such an unwarranted manner.”

  “You skeered him!” Sayward protested, picking him up.

  Now who would have thought Portius would feel like that about his own flesh and blood, she asked herself. He was jealous of his own young one, that’s what he was, and a young one no bigger’n a minute. Wasn’t that just like a man, letting his woman bear his child while he went traipsing through the woods on something he called business, and then holding it against her afterward? She reckoned she knew why he never came around the night this little mite was born. Portius liked to sleep just with her in his bed. He wasn’t partial to a young one laying between her and him at night, and by day howling and raising Jesse when his pappy wanted to read his books or write out lawyer papers.

  Well, Portius would get over that, Sayward told herself. Give her time, and she would give him more young ones than this. She would fill his cabin by day and the loft boards with their little beds at night. She would bench them at ration time around the table thick as blackberries in the fallen timber. Let the settlement of fields and farms come, like he said. By the time it came, he would get used to his own chicks and childer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SAWMILL CHURCH

  IT wasn’t everybody in the woods that was lucky to get to church, Sayward thought, as she seated herself with her young one and looked around the sawmill.

  Goshorn had poled the irons up the river and set up the mill himself. It had an up-and-down saw, and Portius poked fun at its slowness, saying the saw was up today and down tomorrow. He said that the sawyer could start a log at night and go to bed. The first slab wouldn’t be ready to drop off till he got up next morning. But Sayward was glad enough for anything that would cut up the trees.

  Today a short, square-faced log had been set up on end to lay the Good Book on, and the platform that the slabs dropped on was the pulpit. Why, Sayward hadn’t laid
eyes on a pulpit or the hide and hair of a dominie for nigh onto fifteen years! Not since Jary had taken her and Genny on a visit to Conestoga when they were little tykes. Green ash plank was laid at one end for the women of the congregation to sit on. At the other end the men could make out on the skids and saw carriage. The dominie stood in the middle. He had to turn his head one way to preach to the women, and the other way to the men. He only had to be careful when he made a flourish that he didn’t cut his hand on the up-and-down saw.

  Now who would have thought, Sayward told herself, that a no-good, ornery varlet like Jake Tench could have been the start of such as this! He had come back from the river settlements bragging on Maytown. Why, he said, they even had a meeting house down there blocking the mouth of hell, with a bell to ring you to meeting! Sayward had told Ellen MacWhirter, and Jude had sat up half the night to spell out a letter to his old dominie down in Kentucky. About six months afterwards, a gaunt stranger in a cocked hat and black surtout rode up on a white horse to the MacWhirter improvement. He said his business was saving souls, and here were his credentials. With that, he pulled the Good Book out of his saddle bags and read to them, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every living creature.”

  If Portius hadn’t scoffed at that gaunt circuit rider and his trade, Sayward mightn’t have come here today. Her pappy hadn’t gone to meeting hardly a day in his life, and never knew the difference. She had got Portius and her young ones without it. If she had any sins to be forgiven, she declared she did not know what they were. But when Portius made light of church-going, she made up her mind she would see for herself what was against this thing and what was for it.