The Work and the Glory (11 page)

Steed Homestead, Palmyra Township

Chapter Four

Ouch!” Melissa Mary Steed grabbed her foot, hopping to keep her balance. A tiny sliver of wood stuck out from the tip of the little toe of her right foot, and blood was already starting to ooze out from around it.

“Joshua!” She shook her fist in the general direction of the window where she had seen him pass a minute or two before. “Darn you!” She hobbled to a wooden stool and sat down hard. Carefully she grasped the sliver, then shutting her eyes tight, yanked it out. “Ow!” she cried again softly. Then, as she dabbed at her toe with the moistened end of one finger, she tipped her head back and shrieked. “Joshua Steed!”

From outside, near the rain barrel, there was a muffled response.

Mary Ann stepped out from behind the curtain that divided hers and Benjamin’s sleeping area from the rest of the cabin. She was just finishing pulling down her dress and smoothing it out. “What is it, Melissa?”

Melissa held up the sliver, as if her mother could see it across the room in the dim light. “I just ran a sliver in my toe. You told Joshua to smooth out the planks.”

Shaking her head, Mary Ann stepped back behind the curtain. “You know better than to go barefoot before a new plank floor wears down smooth.”

Melissa pulled a face at no one in particular. So much for sympathy. And yet she knew her mother was right. These planks had not come from a sawmill. That was too expensive. One of the first things her father and brothers had done after the family’s arrival was to go down to the creek and select eight to ten of the straightest pine trees growing there and cut them down. Left for the next several months, the logs had seasoned nicely. When winter finally shut down the outside work, there had finally been time to give the cabin a wooden floor.

The logs were dragged into the barn and the work begun. Using “gluts,” or hardwood chisels, and a “beetle,” a large wooden mallet, the planks were sheared off one at a time. Though sawing off planks gave a much smoother surface, even if they had used the big two-man handsaws it would have taken four or five days to get enough to do the cabin floor. With the beetle and gluts, the men had split enough planks in one day to complete the job.

It had been Joshua’s job to take the small adze and the hand plane and work the planks until they were smooth.
Smooth
was a relative word, however. With the floor barely six weeks old, it had not yet worn down to the polished smoothness it would eventually acquire, and a person walked on it barefoot at his own peril. Fresh from the iron bathtub placed behind the curtain near the fireplace, Melissa had been totally caught up in the excitement of going to town and she had forgotten about her bare feet.

She dabbed at her toe again, searching the floor for the offending splinter. Though the wooden floor had its drawbacks, Melissa knew she wouldn’t trade it for the hard-packed dirt one they had endured for the first several months in the cabin. In addition to being cold and clammy, especially when it was damp, the dirt had to be constantly packed and repacked. It had also been Melissa’s job to scratch intricate patterns into the dirt to give the impression of carpeting—floral patterns for the fall, holly leaves and berries for Christmas. It was the popular style among settlers, but she found it tedious, boring work, the effects of which only lasted for a short time under the feet of the family anyway.

Joshua came through the door, shirt open, suspenders hanging down below his waist, still drying his face from shaving. He took one look at Melissa, towel wrapped around her hair, and stopped dead. “Melissa!”

“What?”

“We’re late. Get movin’.”

She stuck out her foot and wiggled her toe at him. The dark spot of blood was still evident. “I just got a sliver in my toe, thanks to you.”

“Come on. Pa and Nathan almost have the wagon hitched. We’re gonna be late.”

At sixteen, Melissa was fully a woman now, and Joshua’s gruffness in no way intimidated her. She smiled sweetly, pulled the towel away from her hair and shook it loose, then started to rub it with exaggerated slowness.

“Ma!” Joshua bellowed. “Tell her to hurry.” Without waiting for an answer he stepped to the stairs. “Rebecca! Matthew! It’s time to go.” He threw his towel in the general direction of one corner and started buttoning his shirt.

“My, my,” Melissa taunted, “aren’t we the impatient one?” She gave him one of her most radiant looks. “There’s really no hurry. Lydia McBride will have so many beaus waiting to talk with her, bet you don’t even get a turn.”

Mary Ann came out into the main part of the room again. “All right, Melissa, that’s enough. Hurry yourself along.”

As her oldest daughter took a comb and brush and went to the small mirror hung on one wall, Mary Ann smiled. As she had grown up, she had only one brother, just eighteen months older than she was. And while Ezra Morgan had treasured each of his seven daughters, he made no attempt to hide the joy with which he viewed his firstborn and only son. Joel Morgan got the best of whatever came to the Morgan family, and that included the lightest assignment when working on the turnpikes.

Because of that, Mary Ann had learned at an early age how to goad Joel to the point of exasperation. It was her way of getting a little justice, and her father, probably shouldering a little guilt for his blatant favoritism, had never tried very hard to stop her. He knew that beneath the surface battles lay a deep bond between Mary Ann and her brother.

Mary Ann knew how it was with Melissa and Joshua. Though her oldest daughter had a large measure of her mother’s patience and gentleness, there was also in Melissa a broad streak of her oldest brother’s temperament. This led to constant fireworks, but for the most part these were benign and always laced with an underlying affection. Actually, they were closer than any other of the children, and in the last year or so Melissa had taken upon herself the role of mediator when Joshua and their father clashed.

There was a solid thump above them as Matthew, in typical fashion, reached the third-from-the-bottom notch in the log ladder that led to his loft, then jumped. In a moment he came down the stairs. He wore brown shoes and long socks tucked into his pant legs. His dark knickers were held up with miniature suspenders. A white shirt, buttoned at the collar, completed his outfit. His hair was plastered to his head as though he had stuck it in the rain barrel. But one rooster tail near the crown had managed to elude his efforts and waved like a flag of surrender.

In a moment Rebecca followed. She came down the stairs primly, stepping carefully as she held her long skirt up from touching. Her hair was combed out long, and bounced lightly on her shoulders. A red ribbon, saved from Christmas the previous year, added a splash of color to her fair skin and pale blue eyes.

Without waiting to be told, the two of them lined up for inspection, cheeks scrubbed, eyes eager. Mary Ann stepped forward, starting to smile; then suddenly tears welled up in her eyes, and she had to turn her head. She brushed them away quickly, before Benjamin should come in and see them. He always chided her a little about letting her emotions run too close to the surface. But here stood her two youngest—Matthew, looking like one of those posters you saw in the store window, squirming with anticipation, and her Becca, destined to be the prettiest of the Steeds, and already aware of it.

What brought the tears was the sudden remembrance of those who should have been standing alongside these two—Mary, their firstborn, named for her mother and grandmother, and dead in her mother’s arms within an hour of birth; Rachel and Leah, identical twins, six weeks premature, with their long dark hair and perfectly formed little fingers and toes, and both stillborn; Jacob, next after the twins, and dead at four of pneumonia; and Laura, likewise stillborn. Each one had torn a piece out of Mary Ann’s soul. She was grateful for those who had been spared, but times like this brought the memory of those who were missing back like a spear to pierce her heart.

The door opened, and Nathan entered the cabin. “Hey, look at this!” He stepped to where the children were standing at attention. If he noticed his mother’s quick brushing at her eyes, he didn’t give any sign. He walked back and forth, inspecting each one carefully, both of them positively beaming under his scrutiny. “Don’t we look somethin’?” He turned to his mother. “I say we just have church right here and forget about the picnic.”

“We may as well,” Joshua snorted. “The way Melissa’s going, it’ll be Sunday before we get there.”

“Nathan,” Melissa said airily, “would you mind riding ahead into town and seeing if you can get that Lydia McBride girl to save five minutes’ time for your brother? Why, he’s more frazzled than a brood hen with a weasel in the henhouse.”

Mary Ann cut in quickly before Joshua could retort. “Nathan, you and Joshua take the bathwater out and empty it. We’ll be right there.”

“All right. The wagon’s out front.”

As Joshua and Nathan grasped the heavy iron tub filled with soapy water, Mary Ann turned and took down a heavy knitted shawl from a peg on the wall. “All right, then,” she said to her children, “let’s go.”

Melissa had just finished slipping into her shoes. She set down the comb and brush, did a slow pirouette for all to see, then curtsied primly. Though her hair still gleamed with wetness, it was brushed back and looked attractive. The dress, chosen from the finest bolt of material in the Rutland Country Store two weeks before the family had come west, was a soft blue, and it heightened the flush in Melissa’s cheeks. Though she would never quite rival Becca, there would be more than one head turned at today’s village picnic.

Mary Ann smiled at her proudly. “Are you ready?”

She nodded sweetly. “I’ve just been waiting for Joshua.”

He was at the door, and turned to howl in protest, but Melissa quickly stepped up beside him, slipped her hand through his free arm and said, “Come on, Josh. Let’s go meet this Lydia McBride of yours.”

Originally the charters of Massachusetts and Connecticut provided that their boundaries would extend from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean and would include all lands not currently inhabited by Christians. During the American Revolution the states had agreed to relinquish title to the western lands, but a vast region of western New York was left in dispute. In 1786 a convention was held in Hartford, Connecticut. In return for some other concessions, New York granted Massachusetts rights of preemption over some six million acres running west from the Finger Lakes region to the Pennsylvania border. Fearing the agreement would not last, Massachusetts decided to dispose of this property immediately and sold it to two wealthy speculators for what amounted to about three cents an acre.

Surveyors moved in quickly to divide the region into six-mile square blocks called “townships.” When people began to build villages within the townships, these settlements would often take on the name of the township. Thus the Steeds had purchased property in “Palmyra Town,” or “Palmyra Township,” but now drove the mile or so south to “Palmyra Village.” And because the village lay right in the southwest corner of the township, it was the closest village for many of the people in the three surrounding townships.

So on this mid-April day of 1827, as the Steed family approached the main intersection of Palmyra Village, people from Macedon, Farmington, and Manchester townships joined them in a steady stream. Wagons, buggies, buckboards, even an oxcart or two, were all moving steadily toward the center of the village proper. Children called excitedly to one another, neighbors waved, strangers nodded pleasantly to those passing by. Occasionally a settler drove a few head of milk cows in for possible sale.

Here and there, some of the more enterprising residents of the village pushed small handcarts filled with sugar cakes, pies, molasses, maple sugar, root beer, or dried fruit. Others hawked such home-produced items as birch brooms, baskets made from black ash, or hand-painted oilcloths for the table.

Matthew and Becca’s eyes were filled with wonder, barely able to dart quickly enough from one thing to another, pointing and oohing and aahing. Melissa, more prim, was determined to act the young woman. Her mother had to smile, for she knew her daughter well enough to know that the hand constantly picking at unseen pieces of lint on her dress was a sure sign of her inner excitement. Melissa had waited long for a chance to come into town, and to do so for a picnic and barn raising was more than she had hoped for.

They moved up Main Street, past a two-story brick store, a clothier with women’s dresses in the window, Abner Cole’s law offices, another store. Down a side street they could see the barges pulled up at the docks along the Erie Canal. Men staggered under the weight of bags and bales being unloaded and taken into the warehouses.

As they came to the corner of Market Street, Benjamin Steed pulled up on the reins and the mules shuffled to a stop. To their right was the two-story frame building which housed the tavern of Stephen Phelps, probably the best-known tavern in the area. From the noise coming through the open door it was clear not all of the people coming to Palmyra Village were headed for the stable which would be the site of the barn raising. At least, not yet.

“Look,” Benjamin said, “there’s Martin Harris’s rig.” He turned back to his wife. “I think I’ll go in and say hello.” He handed the reins over to Joshua, who was sitting next to him.

Mary Ann frowned and gave him a sharp look, but he just smiled. “Ill only be a bit, then I’ll join you there.”

Inwardly she sighed, then felt a quick twinge of guilt. Benjamin had been working hard, with only an occasional trip to town. She had always found it hard to understand this need of men to stand around with other men and lift a glass of beer or down a tankard of grog. She finally smiled and nodded. “All right. Don’t be too long.”

He jumped down and waved as Joshua got the wagon moving again. Then, as Mary Ann sensed the excitement of her family—even Nathan, normally hard to ruffle, was looking about eagerly—she forgot about taverns and men’s ways. She felt her own heart quicken a little at the thought of being in town. She laughed softly and poked at Joshua’s back. “It’s all right to hurry a little if you want, Joshua,” she said.