Fairer than Morning (37 page)

She stood in her wringing wet clothes, her skirt dripping and forming an arc of water in front of her toes. “How did you know he proposed?” She avoided his question with her own.

“He told me, on the road before the two of you rode off together. I assumed you would have told me had you accepted. So why did you not?”

Ann saw half of Mabel's face peeping around the corner of the hallway where it opened on the parlor. “Mabel, go to your room.” The little eye and nose disappeared.

She wrung out her sleeves where they hung from her wrists, limp with water. “Father, I did not think I was in the proper frame of mind to consider it.”

Turning to the cedar chest, her father plucked the folded old quilt from atop it and shook it out, wrapping it around her shoulders. “You know I regret the pain he caused you,” he said. “But it seems he still appeals to you as a suitor. I will give you my blessing, if you are certain he is a good man and the kind of man to whom you wish to yoke your future. I encourage you to accept him, if your estimation and affection for him remain strong and true.”

She reached for the edges of the quilt to keep it in place and sat down by the hearth. “I'm considering it, Father.” She hunched under the quilt and let the fire warm her right side. Why was it so difficult to be certain?

“I have some news for you.” He moved across the rag rug and sat beside her on the other corner of the stone hearth. “I'm going back to Pittsburgh in a few days.”

She waited for the shock to wear off so she could speak again. “Why?”

“Will does not feel he can stay here as long as Master Good is searching for him. I agree with him. So we have determined to go back to Pittsburgh and pay off his indenture.”

She said nothing, the possibilities whirling in her head. Master Good was capable of anything. “I'm coming with you.”

“Ann.” His tone was exasperated. “We have just been through a very long journey. It is too expensive and too arduous for you girls to travel back with us.”

She did not like it, but there was only one solution. “Then they can stay with Mrs. Sumner again, and I will come with you.” She did not know why she was afraid to stay behind this time. She knew everything would be fine at the Sumners. But the thought of watching Will and her father ride away without her was completely unacceptable.

“Then I will strike an even harder bargain with you for this journey,” her father said. “If I allow you to come with us, you must accept that young man's proposal without delay when we return. Provided that you want him, of course. You must make a decision that will give you a future. You cannot stay on the farm forever—you would be throwing away your happiness. I won't allow it.”

Brilliant! She would now be able to put off her answer to Eli even further. Perhaps some solution for her sisters would come to her. She would gain at least an extra three weeks. It was a godsend.

“Agreed,” she said with only a trace of guilt. She would explain it to Eli. She would tell him she was sure she cared for him, but she needed to make sure her father had an apprentice if she were to even consider leaving the farm. Thus, she needed to see Will's case settled. And she felt she owed it to the apprentice to lend her support, given what she knew of his former master.

As she thought through her explanation, it all made sense to her.
That
was why she wanted so desperately to go with them.

Thirty-Four

S
HE THUMPED THE MAN'S HEAD WITH THE LOG
. H
E
fell soundlessly into the snow, facedown. There was no visible mark upon him, but a scarlet circle bled outward into the whiteness like a diabolical halo. She looked up, still clutching the log. Her mother stood in front of her, and her face grew old at an impossible rate, furrows dragging her skin downward, her hair graying to a silver mist
.

“I'm sorry,” she said. Her mother turned and shuffled away through the snow
.

“Don't go!” Ann called after her, her voice thick with tears
.

She dropped the log and stood. A pain in her hands made her turn them palm upward. They were smeared with blood, which dripped down through her fingers and fell like crimson rain into the snow below her
.

She opened her eyes. Her hands were curled toward her in the bed, her legs drawn up under the covers as if she huddled for protection. Leaden sadness pressed her down, making her limbs heavy and useless, as if she were not in control of her body but only an observer trapped deep inside it.

She took a breath and broke the dream's spell, finding herself once more capable of motion. She pushed herself up to a sitting position. The sadness remained, but she was accustomed to it after so many nights of similar dreams. She would go to her pre-dawn chores and work hard, and the hollow inside her would fill up with the business of the morning. They were to depart for Pittsburgh in only four days. There was still much to prepare in order to leave the farm in the care of the Murdochs.

She pulled on her work dress. With Will on the farm, she could no longer work in men's trousers, no matter how convenient it might be. She wrapped herself in her coat and walked down the hallway in the darkness to exit the house. Her family was sleeping, as they did not have to rise until dawn. If only she did not wake so early. She would be glad for an extra hour of sleep, but her spirit did not accept rest after such violent imaginary upheavals.

The barn was quiet. She grabbed a pitchfork from the wall, but it was too dim to see the floor inside the stalls. She retrieved the lantern and lit it with the flint, steel, and tinderbox on the shelf inside the door. She brought the lantern to the center of the barn and hung it from the long ceiling hook to prepare for her work.

Armed again with the pitchfork, she slid back the bolt on Bayberry's stall and opened it. The stall was clean. That was odd. And Bayberry was munching hay. The cows had already been fed as well. Her father was still asleep, so it must have been Will. How early had he risen? Perhaps he had gone back to bed in the cabin after his work. She smiled. It was good to have help. Now she could see to her other tasks. Yesterday's hard rain had left the ground moist and soft. It would be a perfect time to plant the beans and peas in the kitchen garden.

With a quick puff she blew out the lantern. She left the animals to their morning meal and picked up a hoe from the collection of tools on her way out. She carried it across the yard, but let it fall in the dark soil outside the kitchen and continued up the stoop.

Inside the kitchen, the seeds for the spring planting were safe in a few bottles on the top shelf of the hutch. She fetched two bottles and pulled out the corks that kept the seeds dry. With one in each hand, she descended the stairs again and set them carefully by the foundation of the house before picking up the hoe again.

She opened the little gate of the small picket fence that enclosed the kitchen garden. With free-roaming pigs all over the woods and fields, a barrier had to protect the garden's delicacies from their greedy snouts.

She raised the hoe and plunged it into the ground. The iron bit deep into the soil with each blow, turning over the flat surface into chunks of sod that would accept the seed readily. The usual hard labor of hoeing was not quite as arduous after the rain. And there was just enough early light here in the open air to allow her to see her work.

She had turned over half a row. Her stiff arms warmed and her breathing quickened, sending new blood coursing through her sleep-dulled body. Now she was truly awake, though she could have wished for a little more strength. Hoeing on an empty stomach was not ideal, but she did not want to breakfast without her family. She would finish two rows of beans and two of peas, and then go make preparations for the morning meal.

She lifted the hoe.
Thunk
. She lifted it again.

“Would you like some help?”

She started. Behind her, Will approached, carrying a load of small sticks. He walked past her to deposit his collection by the kitchen stoop.

“Yes, I would be glad of some assistance,” she said. No need to ask where he had been. He must have been gathering kindling in the woods after finishing his work in the barn.

He came in through the gate behind her. Ann stood the hoe on its end and poked the handle toward him.

He took it and hefted it in one hand. “How long would you like the rows? To the end of the fence?”

“Yes, please. I will come after you and seed.”

He shrugged out of the coat that Mr. Miller had given him and folded it over the white fence. Beneath it, he wore a shirt and suspenders. She was glad to see it, for if he could wear straps over his back, his wounds had completely healed.

He began to move down the row, his shoulders rolling under the shirt with the rise and fall of the hoe. He was much quicker than she at the work, making it look effortless. She knelt in his wake and began to pour seeds in her palm, shoving them two at a time into the rich loam. They were blessed indeed here in Ohio. She had heard other farmers say before that the land here was like a Garden of Eden. Even the least competent gardener had simply to shove seeds into the ground and up they sprang, watered and nurtured by God's own hand in the perfect balance of rain and a temperate climate. Once the frost had passed, of course.

Bent from the waist, she followed Will. She was practiced in this work. Between the two of them, they would finish soon.

He ended the row and turned back toward her where she had just pressed the soil down over the seeds. She still had a few more to plant on the row. He waited patiently, probably as aware as she that whacking the soil right beside her would fling up clods in her face. She continued her work, kneeling down.

A flash of her mother's image recurred to her again from the dream. Her conscience would not leave her alone.

“You look burdened,” he said. “Is it the upcoming journey? I do not want to add to your cares.”

“No.” She rubbed a stray lock of hair back with her sleeve so she would not streak mud across her forehead.

She had not told anyone about the nightmares. But thinking about her mother walking away from her in her mind's eye made her chest hurt. Perhaps Will had the same kinds of visions when he should be sleeping peacefully. If anyone could understand, he might.

“The journey is not troubling me.” She dropped more seeds in the churned ground. “It is simply that I have disturbing dreams. They are hard to forget.”

His look grew more intent. “About the bounty hunter?”

“In some ways.” She found it too painful to admit her mother's presence in her dreams, even though he might have similar visions. But having admitted the cause of her trouble, the urge to be understood drove her onward. “I dreamed that you did not stop me, and I killed the bounty hunter.” She did not stop in her work, moving two feet on to the end of the row, dumping another small handful of seeds into her palm from the bottle.

His silence forced her to look up when she had planted the final two.

“I dream as well. Sometimes it is unpleasant.” For a moment his face seemed to lose the health and color he had gained since his arrival and returned to a hint of drawn, sharp pallor.

She rose to her feet.

“Have you told your father that it still troubles you?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“He told me something that has helped me.” Will averted his eyes, as if shy on the verge of such a confidence.

“What is that?”

“That seeing the evil in ourselves is the worst trial we ever face.”

She let the words sink in. Yes, there was evil in her, in the desire to take revenge, to crush the life from a human soul and personally send Rumkin to his final judgment for what he had done to her. Her unwilling twinge of pleasure at the thought released an answering flood of self-hatred. “I do not like it.” Her voice was loaded with repulsion.

“Neither do I. But I have accepted it. As your father told me, we are not sinless. And if we think we are, we will become proud and harsh.”

Had this depth of spirit opened up in Will merely because of her father's counsel? It could not have. Humans did not create the capacity of a soul. It must have been there all along, God's gift in him, waiting only to be liberated.

She must not become tearful in front of him. Thank goodness he shifted back to the new row in the ground and began to turn it over, allowing her to gather herself and steady her hands to her task.

They worked on in silence, the wet soil giving to the pressure of her hands like clay. The light grew and pinkened, reminding her of the last time she and Will had met on the brink of dawn.

By the time they finished, the skyline was rose-gold over the trees and fields.

She tucked the seed bottle under her arm and watched the bright edge of the sun clear the tree line.

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,” she said to herself.

Footsteps told her that Will had walked up alongside her.

When he had given her his letters for safekeeping, she would never have imagined they would stand here only six weeks later, under such different circumstances, watching the sun rise again.