3stalwarts (123 page)

Jerry flushed.

“No.”

“All right, all right. Easy. It’s just I could use a good girl round my house. I’d be willing for one like her to cover the price with a bill or two.”

“She carries her own papers,” said Jerry.

“Then there’s no objection if I make her an offer?”

“Yes, there is!”

The gatekeeper eyed Jerry coolly.

“It’s a hot day,” he observed. “You wouldn’t consider a little beer at a fip for a tumbler?”

Jerry did not answer.

“Hottest day I ever see,” said the man, raising his voice. “Real unseasonable weather. But I read there’s a storm coming. Seems a pity a handsome girl should have to tromp along a road on a day like this. Oh, there you are, missy. Did you get your drink?”

She was smiling, her red lips freshened and glistening with the water.

“It’s a good well,” she said. “Thank you.”

The gatekeeper’s eyes rested on her face. Jerry noticed that he was hiding his twisted back from her.

“You wouldn’t want to take a job with a gatekeeper? Easy housekeeping and steady pay? Serve drinks to the gents and fetch water to lady passengers, now?”

She smiled at him.

“No,” she said, but Jerry read her estimation of him, and wondered if he had been a sound man whether she would have agreed. He kept stiff and silent. “No,” she said. “I’m bonded to this man.”

“Oh, you are? I offered him the price of his papers, but he said you wasn’t bonded.”

She turned suddenly to Jerry, and her eyes shone.

“Did he?” she said over her shoulder; but she was looking at him, and he wondered what she was thinking that had so brightened her.

“Come along, Mary,” he said stiffly.

She bent meekly for her bundles, but her lips did not lose their curve. And as they walked away, she kept at his side.

“That was a bad-looking man,” he said, as soon as they were out of earshot. “I wonder you could talk with him so.”

She eyed him sidelong for a few paces.

“But you were there. It was all right, wasn’t it?”

His chin lifted, and she noted his set jaw, and she saw that she had pleased him. So she kept her face forward, and walked in silence.

“I wish, Mary, you’d call me by my name. It might save talk.”

“I will if you want me to.”

“Then do.”

“But I don’t know what your name is.”

He remembered that she was unable to write her own name; therefore she could not have read his. It embarrassed him to tell her.

“My name’s Jeremiah Fowler. But I’m called Jerry.”

“All right, Jerry.”

Her stride was easy, her legs swung freely from her hips. She did not bend forward like most women, but kept herself erect. He wondered what could have freshened her so.

“That water felt so good,” she said after a time. “I washed my face in the bucket and did up my hair again. I feel I could walk all day, now.”

He did not answer.

“Did you mind my taking so long, Jerry?”

“No.”

After a moment, she asked, “Would you have let me go to that man?”

He shot a swift look at her, but she was keeping her eyes to the road.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I was wondering.”

Her voice was small. He felt his thoughts blur. He tried to think, and he did not answer her. But she drew in her breath slowly and smiled to herself. And he gave up thinking, and they went on until they heard hoofs trotting behind them, and suddenly a voice cried, “Boil me if it ain’t young Jerry Fowler!”

The Shaker missioner reined in his spanking pair and stared down at them from shrewdly twinkling eyes, and his long face grinned through a network of wrinkles.

“I expected I might catch you up,” he said, “but not so soon as this. Climb in.”

“Thanks,” said Jerry. He crossed the roadside ditch and heaved up his two bundles.

“Stick them in the back,” directed the Shaker. “Who’s the lady?”

Jerry stammered.

“Mary Goodhill. This is Mr. Bennet.”

The Shaker lifted his high hat and gave her a smile.

“Pleased to meet you, miss. Issachar Bennet’s my name. I made Jerry’s acquaintance this morning. We crossed on the same ferry. Now under that oilcloth there’s a feather mattress I’m taking outwards for the elder Meachem in Kentucky. I’ll warrant it soft. You lay down on it, missy, and, Jerry, you climb up alongside of me.”

As soon as they were aboard, he clucked to his horses and shook them into a trot.

“It’s uncomfortable hot for foot travel,” he said. “When did you leave Albany?”

“Past one,” said Jerry. “The sun was a good piece past noon when we got to the Snipe Street Gate.”

“I thought I might come up with you,” said the Shaker. “Dudley, back there, who tends the halfway gate, told me about you. I reckoned it was you, Jerry; and I guessed it my own way.”

“How?”

“You’d never know so I might as well tell you. He kept talking about missy’s hair.”

He glanced backward at the girl.

“What do you think of our country, missy?”

“I haven’t seen much of it.” She was resting against a bundle, facing forward. “It seems flat here, and a long way between places.”

“This is a dull stretch of road. You’ll like it better when you come to the Mohawk. How do you like this young man?”

She flushed up and made no reply. Bennet chuckled delightedly and surreptitiously drove his elbow into Jerry’s side. He seemed in a bubbling humor; all at once he shot a quid out of his lips, drew his hand across his mouth, and started humming. Jerry shifted uncomfortably at the tune and fixed his eyes between the horse’s back-pricked ears.

“A roguish youth asked me to woo,

Heighof The buds were blowing. And I was puzzled what to do,

Heighof The buds were blowing… .”

From a swift-rolling wagon, the road wore a different aspect. The ruts showed plainly, the narrow marks of dearborns and chaises, the broad tracks of the Pennsylvania wagons, the ruffled spots of the footprints of herded cattle. It ran straight as an arrow, and the horses trotted it back with their hoofs, as though they were running a treadmill, and the shadows of the poplars, as the sun declined, made bars across the road, that flashed sunlight and shadow past the wagon in a continual bright glittering. The hoofs of the horses thudded a pleasant tattoo, and the axles rattled in the hubs and the spokes clattered and the harness slapped against the horses’ ribs, working out edges of lather, filling the air with a comfortable horsy smell, and the dust trickled down the fellies of the wheels and rolled out behind in a white cloud.

The Shaker spoke in a lowered voice.

“So you went and did it?”

Jerry nodded.

Ahead of them on the road he saw a line of grey hoods appearing, another wheat train.

“I saw it bothering you,” said the Shaker, with his bubbling chuckle. “Young man, going west. I told you there was nothing like it in this world. But now where’s your farm?”

Jerry made no answer.

“I’ll bet a girl like her comes high off Henry Fearon’s boat… . Didn’t she?” he asked after a few rods.

Jerry nodded. He could not meet the Shaker’s quizzical eyes.

“Seventy dollars,” he said. “She’s signed for two and a half years to meet it.”

“What are you going to do with her, eh?”

“I don’t know. I gave her back her papers.”

The old man shifted his feet after a jounce.

“Riding all right back there?” he called over his shoulder.

“Fine.” She was smiling. Her face was tilted to see over the edge of the wagon box, and the breeze was plucking out wisps of hair from her neat braids.

“And she come along?” said the Shaker.

Jerry nodded. “She hadn’t nowhere else to go to.”

“So what are you going to do about that, Jerry?”

“I haven’t thought. I can’t buy my farm. I’ll have to work for a year.”

The Shaker looked at him squarely. “Sorry you did it?”

Jerry lifted his face. “No.”

“Good boy.” He broke into his humming.

“The roguish youth asked me to kiss,

Heigho! The buds were blowing!” I frown’d to show I took ‘t amiss,

Heigho! The buds were blowing!

“She’s a right pretty young girl, son. I think you’re lucky at that. What do you want with a farm? Get yourself work. There’s going to be big doings in this state from now on, whatever you do. Listen, when I left Albany it was a good while after you, and word was round the city. I heard it in the Planters’ Bar. They’ve passed the Canal Bill.”

“Have they?”

“They surely have. You living in Uniontown, you haven’t no idea what it’s going to mean. Clinton preaches about the farmers— that’s sensible— he needs the vote. But the cities are going to feel it, too. For why? Take Albany. Every ounce of grain that comes from the west will pass through there. Every bit that goes to the farmers will pass through there. Same for New York. Tammany Hall will be neck-deep in money in a dozen years. Trade that’s going to Philadelphy will come here. There ain’t no one else can compete. Damn my blinkers if I don’t think the best thing that ever happened to you was catching sight of missy’s hair, boy. You’ve got to keep where the money is.”

Jerry’s face brightened. He did not answer.

“Outside of the fact that it was a damn handsome thing for you to do. By crinkus, shake hands.”

He stretched out his lean fingers. They were rolling down on the wheat train. They heard the notes of Pennsylvania Bells. The horses were bending to their long stride, the teamsters walking in the footpath, whips in hand. The hoods and the boat-shaped boxes were filmed with dust. The wheels were caked with grey dried mud. Under the axles swung the leather water buckets and the grease pails. They also showed gobbets of grey dirt. The Shaker pointed.

“Heavy hauling westward of here. Them are the wagons that’ll be put out of business. Those tough bezabors don’t think so, but it’s so. We’ll have a new idea of haulage in a dozen years. A hundred tons at a lick, maybe, and night travel. I wish I was in your boots, Jerry, heading into the midst of it with a girl along.”

His face sobered, his eyes drooped sadly for a while. Then he cheered up.

“I had my turn at it in my time, and there’s still some hell in me. Watch out, boy, or I may chuck you against the head and drive off with your girl.”

He chuckled.

“What’U I do with her?” Jerry asked.

“Been bothering you?”

“Yes.”

The Shaker laughed aloud.

“It wouldn’t have bothered me! Just now she thinks you’re the hand-somest article in pants she ever came across. Just look at her if you don’t believe it. I’ll bet you a York shilling against a kiss from her that she’s studying the back of your head and wishing you had a hair-cut.”

“Fair enough,” said Jerry.

They turned around together, confronting her, the Shaker grinning like an amiable old devil, Jerry puzzled and bright-faced.

“I win,” said the Shaker, and he poked Jerry’s ribs, while the girl wondered what they had been saying about her. She heard his voice singing the tune he had hummed, but she couldn’t catch the words, because they were pitched for Jerry’s ear. But something in the tune must have touched a nerve, for she appeared to draw into herself and muse.

“Heigho!” sang the old Shaker.

“The roguish youth asked me to wed,

Heigho! The buds were blowing!

I looked wise and shook my head,

Heigho! The buds were blowing!

My confidence grew less and less,

He so determined was to press,

Though I meant No— I cried O yes!

Heigho! The buds were blowing!”

The sun was going down behind a burning cloud; the wind was dropping. A bite of coldness had crept across the sky. Far on his right, Jerry saw the twilight reaching up like a curtain from the east.

“You’d better get right at it!” said the Shaker. “Or else you’re a better boy than I was at your age!”

He chuckled and slapped his horses with the reins. A mile ahead they saw the dip of the valley and a dark blot near the river. Schenectady.

The end gate stood at the edge of the slope, and the horses slid to a stop with their noses against the palings.

“Hey, Ike!” The stout keeper greeted Bennet with a knowing wink. “Two fips, you old bezabor.”

The Shaker tossed out two coins of six cents’ value.

“Wind up your gate, Ted. Wind it. Work the lard off your middle. My off horse smells a wedding.”

The keeper laughed and turned his crank with his red hands, and the gate slid silently up in its channels and they passed through.

“They know me out westward,” said Bennet.

He drove a half mile silently.

“You must think I’m a queer preacher. But I’m just Ike Bennet. I was born with the gift of exhortation, but the Lord never touched me.” There was a strange solemnity in his tone. “And I went west like any young man —but I wasn’t a farmer. I had to keep moving. So I took to preaching, boy. I’m right good at any kind of preaching, Baptist, or Church of England, or Methody. But I always travel as a Shaker in these parts. It’s all right for a Shaker to have his pint. And they outfit me handsome back in Lebanon.”

He cocked his head to estimate the daylight.

“I’m an unrighteous man by all accounts; but I reckon I didn’t do no particular harm to anybody. And I can preach! Some day maybe you’ll hear me!”

“I’ve got nothing against you,” said Jerry.

“Being an unrighteous man,” said Bennet, “I know how to advise a human being.”

He glanced over his shoulder.

“Boy,” he said, “you’ve lost a farm this morning, but you’ve got something money don’t usually buy. If I was you, I’d just put that transaction right out of my head. Owning her’s the only bad thing I see for you. It wouldn’t hurt her, but it’s bad for a man.”

“It don’t seem right.”

“To hell with it,” said the preacher. “There’s Schenectady, the Dutchest damned town in this country, and the only place I was ever squeaked in a horse deal. No wonder the college boys riot them! I’m spending the night here. How about you?”

“We’ve had a good ride in your wagon. I think we’ll get across the bridge.”

“Tromping all night?”

“There’s an hour’s walking light.”