Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) (25 page)

The ladies found me odd but lovable, and I admired their needle–work. However it came out, the aim was beauty. To show them that I aimed for beauty sometimes too, I showed them my paintings which I got out of the trunk the day I put the scraps of almond wool back into it. And since she really liked it and could afford it, and since I didn’t much like it anymore, I let the fiercest lady – the most unhappy one – buy “Moses Destroying the Golden Calf.” She needed it and I didn’t; I didn’t feel fierce anymore.

She offered me a dollar for it. That was the first money I ever made as a painter, and I’m glad it was from a merchant’s wife. To merchants and their families the giving and taking of money seems quite natural, not at all awkward.

She helped me get off on the right foot about selling. It paid a fourth of a week’s lodging and made me see that there was more to be had from painting than the pleasure and relief of doing it. I gave Sarah shelter and food for half a week with that picture. The joy of giving to her from my inheritance had not prepared me for the joy of giving her what I earned. There was no comparison.

While I have Sarah’s lap to drop my money into, I can never tire of selling.

One morning in mid-May Sarah asked me to come with her. She had made, if I would agree, a choice. “The house needs work,” she said. “I don’t know you’ll like it.”

I thought I’d made it clear that I’d agree to any place by then, especially with so much of our money spent and both her dresses somewhat horsey however much I aired them. But she said, no, I had to see the place before she could be definite.

We hired a horse and buggy and drove out the turnpike to Freehold, which was fifteen miles. Oh what a lovely bright pure young green morning it was. Even our tired livery horse could feel the hope of such a morning and clip along. The mountains were like lady giants lying together, vast hips and breasts. The fruit trees were in flower.

At Freehold we stopped for the owner of the farm. His name was Mr. More and he owned several farms. He and his sons farmed ours and pastured here in summer, but nobody lived here.

We drove a short way up the narrow rutty spur called Red Mill Road, and here we were.

Sarah had not exaggerated. Yes, the house needed work.

“I didn’t mention, it’s logs,” she said.

“So I see.”

She stayed in the buggy with Mr. More while I looked around the house. It was simply an old abandoned log cabin left from the time when the frontier was here. So many times I’d described log cabins and how to build them to my pupils, but this was the first one I ever actually saw. It was the size I’d told my pupils was usual – twenty by sixteen, roughly. Poor old relic, easing its way back to earth. The ridgepole sagged like a rope between the gables. Someone had long since taken the door for its boards. The windows were empty holes, without even sashes. The chimney was at least stone, not mud and sticks, but it was cracked and partly fallen.

I went inside. All the leaves and dust from forty acres were blown into the corners. There were even a few weeds growing in the deepest parts. The floor was split logs – puncheons – flat side up, laid none too fussily. There was evidence that Mr. More’s cattle had found shelter here. I saw sunbeams coming through the roof and between most of the logs.

I went back to the buggy.

“How much?” I asked.

“Just what I told your sister: six-forty,” Mr. More said.

I looked at Sarah. “Can you make something of the fields?” I asked.

“I think so.”

Mr. More said, “A little chinking – some quarrels in the windows – some jacking – ”

I turned my back and walked away. How dared he tell me what to do? I knew what to do. Nobody had to tell me how to run my home.

We all three drove back to Kaatskill and did the legal things at bank and courthouse. Six hundred and forty, when we’d been ready to go to eight! It was like a gift of a hundred and sixty dollars.

By two in the afternoon we had our indenture, and our earnest paid, and Edward written to for more, and our lodging dismissed. We were on a dray with our trunks, heading home along the turnpike. We had broom and hoe and scrubbing brush and pail and mortar and ax and saw and boards and nails and windows, and a great marvelous mess to use them on. Food too. Lots of things. Twine, curtain cloth, rope, a ton of wonders.

Mr. More said, “I don’t know how I’ll find time to help you. Me and the boys’ve got our own cornland to work up. It’s a poor time for a bee.”

“Don’t think of it, Mr. More,” I said.

But with what guilt they set us down and left us here alone, our drayman and Mr. More. The more we said we’d be just fine, the more it proved we didn’t know. They kept looking back doubtfully. We waved and smiled each time.

Then they were out of sight, and the world was out of sight, and right there in the wide-open of our yard Sarah held me close and kissed me.

We had to begin with a kiss, of course. Anything else would have been improper. But we made it a short one. Our new home was more exciting.

“Here we are,” I said.

“Let me out of this
dress
,” Sarah said.

We had about three hours of daylight left. There was no really correct place to begin. Anywhere would do, but Sarah decided the roof was most important.

She cut and trimmed a small pine tree to prop the ridgepole. In fact, she cut two; the first she cut too short. The second was too long, but she shopped bits off until it could be jammed and clouted and pried into place, upright in the middle of the floor. It gave us, so to speak, a four-room house. The ridgepole seemed to consider crumbling into dust at the shock, but it settled down still in place. I knew that was a good omen.

Sarah seemed to think it meant we could sleep inside the house right away, but I went ahead with making our first home in the neat orderly out-of-doors.

I gathered dry leaves and pine needles and some last year’s cornhusks and stuffed the empty tick I’d brought from Connecticut. Our trunks made an open-sided square around our camp, and then I roofed them with hemlock branches arranged more or less like thatch. I kindled fire with flint and steel, though it would have been quicker to walk to Freehold after coals. It was important that our first fire be original. Our own pure creek was handy-by to give me water for a stew. While it cooked I went to work scraping the cabin floor with our new hoe. Sarah had to rest awhile and gaze at her pole. “Just can’t take my eyes off it,” she admitted.

Mr. More came by when he’d finished his supper. He seemed disappointed to find us so cozy and cheerful, sitting on our tick and quilts and eating our good-smelling supper from two pretty plates and cups with two silver spoons. What a beautiful word “two” is.

“Where’d you get that fire?” he asked. “
I
fetched you some.”

“How kind of you,” I said.

“And my wife sends you bread and salt. I’ll make you the loan of any tool I’m not using myself. You ladies sisters?”

“Not exactly.”

“You kin at all?”

“In a way.”

“Where be ye from?”

I had no reason not to tell. I just didn’t like being questioned.

“We’re Yankees,” I said.

He was kind and we needed him, but I was glad to have him go.

A better guest came later, as I was settling my back into Sarah’s front to fall asleep. We heard a noise and sat up so fast we jarred the hemlock thatch. It was a dog, a big male pup almost grown, black and white and ruddy brown, with ears lopped over at the tips and a white plumed tail that curled over and rested on his back. He was about a foot and a half tall at the shoulder.

We fed him stew. That’s when his tailed curled over.

“I wonder whose he is,” I said.

“He’s ours, because he came to us,” Sarah said. We named him George.

In the night, George growled softly. Sarah crawled out and listened. “It’s just critters. They’ve had the run of the place so long they can’t get used to it we belong here now,” she said, in a voice clear and loudish to let them know they had to stay away. I built up the fire.

George settled down again, so we did. “First thing the store opens, I’ll buy a gun,” Sarah said.

I didn’t wholly like having George on our quilt, but he felt he had a natural right to it and perhaps he did. He was never an unmixed blessing, but there was reassurance in his weight and warmth on our feet that night, and in his animal alertness, and maybe even in his maleness. I wouldn’t rule it out.

Sarah was still preoccupied with the roof. She nailed cleats to a pole to make a ladder and climbed up. She poked and tested and considered and came down, not disheartened, to say, “Well, she can’t be patched. There’s nothing sound to nail to. I’ve got to put new rafters in and boards and shingles and just make a new one, that’s all.”

I’d taught my pupils that it takes several men to roof a cabin. I’d also taught them that the weight of the roof is what holds the gable-ends in place. I couldn’t swear any of it was true, but it was what I’d taught, and I did dread having our gables topple with everything else we had to do.

“Sarah?”

“Don’t stop me now,” she said. “This’ll take a while. I got to get right at it.”

“Sarah, let’s hire it done?”

“Hire it!”

But I wore her down with kisses (which George wanted to get in on) and little pouts and by repeating that I
knew
she could do the roof. I said I only wanted to be humored, unreasonably, lovingly indulged, and when she walked into Greenville for the gun she spoke to the storekeeper about a carpenter. (We’re about halfway between Freehold and Greenville here, handy to both.) She wore a dress. I thought it best.

The storekeeper himself was a part-time carpenter. That same day he brought out a helper and a wagonload of supplies. They set to with energy and practiced skill, but they were three days at it even so. I thought Sarah might pale a bit at the sight of what she almost undertook to do alone. I was ready to reassure her that she really could have, but the question never came up. She did complain that they’d taken down the ridgepole she’d made such a good prop for, but that was all. My darling does not lack for belief in herself. Even when I can’t easily share it, I’m glad she has it.

Except for corn, our fields were already planted, growing oats and potatoes and hay. The cornfield was already prepared. Sarah walked to the red mill our road was named for and carried home a sack of seed corn over her shoulder.

From the pole ladder where I was mortaring first the chimney and then the walls, I could look over the rise behind our house and see my Sarah planting corn, a sight so beautiful I hoped the roofers weren’t looking at her too. In her left hand she carried a stick, crossbarred to make a hole of the proper depth. With her right hand she tossed the kernel into the hole and then with a forward step both closed the hole and prepared a new one. Whenever her toss went wrong she bent and saved the kernel. She could go whole rows without having to bend, and even her bending was lovely. In all she planted four acres without an awkward movement and without strain. She said it was sport.

The first cash product of our farm was a wolf. That was while we still slept outside. George sensed it first and woke us. Sarah saw its eyes reflecting our campfire and aimed and fired while I was still looking around for what had wakened George. Sarah is a very good shot, and she’d been practicing, but I think there was some plain good luck involved as well, because wolves are rare here now and such as escape the bounty hunters are careful and wise. And this wolf was at what it must have considered a safe distance. She got it neatly, I’m glad to say. She felt proud, but I was careful not to overpraise that side of her. I’m not really interested in shooting and blood. Next day she took the tail to the town clerk in Greenville and collected a forty-dollar bounty. It paid for our new roof, and I
am
interested in
that
.