Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) (9 page)

I cut my hair. The family talked against it, but nobody stopped me. They stood around and watched, like watching a fist fight but not getting into it.

We had no looking glass. I just felt and cut. My head felt light and strange and cool and free. It would take some getting used to. When I’d got to where I couldn’t catch any more locks, I stopped.

Ma said, “I’ll even it up for you.” I felt the blades cold on my neck. Everybody allowed it was uncanny how like a boy I looked when she got through.

I didn’t know what I’d do when my hair needed another cut. Patience was supposed to bring shears.

“You know there’s a toll for walking down a turnpike?” Pa said.

I didn’t know. For just walking?

“I won’t walk down a turnpike, then,” I said.

“There’s a toll for bridges,” he said. “And ferryboats.”

“I’ll swim.”

I figured I could walk fifteen miles a day, at least, and work here and there as I went for my eats. Ma’d fed many a man on his way like I’d be. I knew it could be done and was done. They’d been by our fire and told, and made me want to go. I don’t know why they didn’t make Pa want to. How could he stay in Connecticut on that rocky hilly farm that had been butchered before we ever laid eyes on it, and not feel his heart just break to go? The only way I can explain Pa on that is to say he never had that hopefulness you need to push out and try. He might look big and cheery and reckless, but inside he’s very scared to take a chance.

There was no use starting till the mud dried out and let the farmers at their fields so they’d be glad to swap a meal for a little help. I was fit to go, but I waited around, teaching my sister Mary how to use an ax and drive the cattle. Pa skipped Rachel – he figured she was past the age. I wanted to teach Mary how to handle a gun too, but Pa said that was going too far. He wished he’d never taught me, he said. Mary was going to help him, but she wasn’t going to get big ideas about herself. He’d learned his lesson, he said. I have to laugh at Pa thinking it’s having a big idea to do like him.

“I don’t want Mary claiming her name’s Mark one of these days,” Pa said.

My new name was Sam. Did learning to shoot cause that? I expect it could’ve. It made me feel I could take care of myself, and not be beholden, and love who my feeling went to. I suppose lots of girls loved Patience but never said. Maybe it was because I could shoot that I could say. No matter that Patience changed her mind and I had to cry and go alone. I was never for a minute sorry I’d said.

Came the day I left home, a Monday late in April. I was up early and everybody with me. I hoped the little ones would sleep on, but they got up, crying. I was crying too, but that had nothing to do with how I had to go.

I laid my blanket on the floor and put my extra clothes and tinderbox along it, and the jag of nocake and jerky Ma had for me, and then I rolled the blanket long, like a log, and bent it and tied the ends together so I could hang it around my neck and over my shoulder. It rode easy that way. Pa let me take a hatchet, on grounds I’d be back before he could miss it, and I hung that at my waist, along with a little pan Ma gave me, and I was ready to go except I didn’t know how to.

Ma kissed me and said, “I wish we had some money for you.”

“I’ll make my way,” I said.

“I know. You’ll be just fine.”

“Ma, I’ll come back if you need me. Just let me know.”

She nodded, playing there would be a way she could let me know, and said, “Now, off you go.”

Pa said, “You won’t get twenty mile.”

I kissed them all. Even Pa. “I won’t say goodbye,” he said. “You’ll be back in two days.”

“Off you go,” Ma said.

“Don’t tell
no
body you’re a girl,” Pa said. “Nobody! Hear?”

I set off. I hardly could, but just by taking one step and the next, I did it.

But I couldn’t get up any enthusiasm, and I knew I had to try Patience one more time, to make sure. It wouldn’t make sense to get all the way to Genesee and
then
wonder what she’d say if I asked her again.

And no matter what she said, maybe she’d give me one last kiss.

So I cut back and around the woods to Patience’s place, and stood, scared, in the road looking at her house all grand and white, and me with everything I owned across my shoulder and not heavy. I could see how there was never any real reason to expect anything.

But I’d come out of my way to make sure, and after the racket her dogs made I knew I must’ve been seen. I went on up and thumped the main front door. The door to Patience’s part was inside, down the hall, but I couldn’t very well go in there after all that had been.

Who came to the door was Mrs White, Edward White’s wife, the one that wouldn’t let me warm up the day I fetched the wood. She didn’t know me as a boy. She was almost pleasant at first, but soon’s I said who I was she shut the door all but a crack, like I was dangerous, and peeked out at me. I felt the air on my head and wished for my hair back. I felt my plaguy face and ears get red. No way to stop them. The blood just went. I stood still and played I didn’t notice.

“I came to see Patience, Miss White,” I said.

“She’s gone.”

“Gone! Where?”

“Visiting.”

“Oh.”

She wanted to shut the door then, so even though I was choking I had to hurry to say, “Tell her I came by. Tell her I’m heading out. Tell her I said goodbye.”

Then I could go. Going couldn’t be fast enough or hard enough to suit me. I wanted to walk till my feet bled and my knuckles dragged and my belly broke, to see if maybe I could hurt enough someplace else to tire out the knot in my chest.

Chapter Two

My road ran first northwest and then veered northeast, up the valley of the Hooestennuc River, the way the men who stopped at our place talked about. Even at flood from spring runoff, the river showed its biggest rocks. The rest of the year it showed the smallest too. You couldn’t take a boat up it, or ship to market on it, but it did give me many a drink, and it marked the easiest grade through a tangly batch of steep hills.

I planned to rest often and be sensible, so my strength would hold through the many weeks I’d be walking. But on that first day, every time I stretched out in the roadside grass I got so jumpy I had to set right off again. I had to put space between me and all I was lonesome for – Ma and Mary and the little ones, and Patience. I kept thinking Patience could be home again by now, and I should ask her again. It was a dangerous thought, that made me weak. I wouldn’t be able to trust myself until I’d gone too far, so far I couldn’t turn back.

To save my boots, I carried them, tied together, over my shoulder. I settled into a good ground-covering swing. A man can walk four miles an hour, but I don’t think I was making that much. All Connecticut tilts up to the north, to let the rivers run down to the Sound, so even where I seemed to have a flat way I knew I was going uphill. It would be uphill all the way. All to the good, I thought. It would help my belly break.

But my hip joints worked so smooth, and my muscles felt so long and strong, that I kind of knew I wasn’t about to break. I kind of didn’t want to break, anyway. My feet had soles like boot leather, and arches like stone bridges. They wouldn’t bleed. They’d carry me to the edge of the world if I wanted to go that far. Just up Connecticut and Massachusetts and across York State would be easy.

Noontime I knew I had to eat. I didn’t want to stop already, while somebody might still say, “Why, you ain’t Sam
No
body, you’re Ira Dowling’s gal.” I went until I crossed a creek, and stopped then and unrolled my blanket and ate, very slow, in little bits, a little jerky and a little nocake, with a whole lot of water between bits.

Then on again, covering ground. It was a pretty day, April and all. Just right.

Towards night I asked a farmer could I sleep in his barn. He looked me over for something to be against, but there I was, a simple farmer boy. “Reckon,” he said, so I went on into his haymow, which was pretty much empty, as could be expected by April. There was a little hay, though – folks do hate to feed the last of it till they see the next will be along – and I scooped what I could into a nest and flopped down.

The farmer came in and perched on the edge of the mow and pecked away at me with questions. I told everything true except my name. He said I’d never get to Genesee. He said I was a fool and should’ve stayed where I was. He said I was no twenty-one, without a whisker like I was, and shouldn’t claim it.

I asked if he had a chore or two I might do for some supper. He said he figured he could spare a little samp and milk, being as it looked like a good year, and being as he had a boy himself, older though, pushing out through that godforsaken wilderness somewhere. Never mind the chores.

I hope his boy fared better than the summer did. It was the famous summer of 1816, when it snowed off and on over most of New England the whole summer long. But it still looked all right in April.

I ate with his family. There were some girls, and then a boy only sixteen with some sure-enough sprouts on his chin. He wanted to hear all about Genesee. I told him all I could, in my deepest voice. The girls listened too, one in particular.

My eyes kept closing by themselves, but the boy wouldn’t stop asking me what it was like out there. He followed me out to the barn, asking, and was still asking when I feel asleep.

Someone’s touch made me stir. I thought it was the boy, and mumbled, “I told you all I know.” I thought it was still night and I hadn’t slept at all, but it was earliest morning, dawn, with the birds really blaring, and who woke me was the girl who’d listened so.

“Sam, you have to go,” she said. “Now. Hurry.”

I woke right up and started rolling my pack before I asked, “Why?”

“Papa’s going to turn you in as a runaway prentice.”

“But I ain’t.”

“I don’t know. I just know he’s going to, for the reward. He said last night. I let you sleep till birdsong.”

I stepped down behind the barn. I guess she didn’t peek, because she still called me “Sam” when I went back in to get my pack. She had cheese and a big cut of bread for me, and some milk that I drank right away so’s to leave her the cup.

She kept looking at me peculiar and standing peculiar, sort of close of close to me. I didn’t know what to make of her.

“I’m obliged to you,” I said, if that was what she wanted.

“It’s nothing.” She kept on.

“I better get off,” I said.

She said, “You better,” but she had me by the arm and I didn’t like to jerk away.

“It’s getting pretty light. They’ll be about,” I said.

And she pushed up and kissed me.

I was just so surprised. Did girls act like that with boys as a regular thing?

Before I had a chance to enjoy the kiss it was over and she was laughing and pushing me out saying, “Good luck, Sam. You’re sweet. Hurry.”

Just remembering her kiss kept me grinning and I stepped along so fine. Being a boy was going to be pretty good. I pictured girls all the way to Genesee giving me little laughy kisses and keeping my spirit up. I began to see it might be better this way than getting all tore up by caring a lot. A kiss that you feel deep tears you deep later when it’s lost. But a laughy kiss hurries you on your way and makes the miles fly.

People I passed looked at me and I felt so good I smiled even when they didn’t. We’re not strong for smiling in Connecticut, as a rule. I didn’t take it personal.

Towards night, again, I asked to be put up. The farmer this time made me work for it, mending a stone wall the winter had thrown down. I was near spoiled enough to think I shouldn’t have to. Then his wife fed me good and gave me the use of a husk mattress. I threw it down on the floor of the empty corncrib and slept like a cloud.

Next morning I couldn’t get out. I pounded and hollered, and was just starting with my hatchet when the farmer came up.

“Don’t do that, boy,” he said.

“Well, let me out then.”

“We’ll just wait a while.”

“What for?”

“For the newspaper,” he said. “To see who’s looking for a runaway prentice about five foot eight with brown hair that likes to say he’s twenty-one but he’s no more’n fourteen, and whatever his name is it ain’t Sam. Leastwise if you say, ‘Sam,’ he half the time don’t hear.”

“I’m no prentice.”

“If they’s nothing in the paper, I”ll let you go and no harm done.”

“I got a long ways to go. You let me out or I’ll chop my way out.”

“You chop my corncrib, boy, and the sheriff will see to you.”

I believed him and I didn’t have time for sheriffs.

“When’s the paper come?”

“Any day now it should be along.”

“Any day!”

“Just settle in.”

His wife pushed my eats between the slats. I studied what would make her help me, like turn her back and close her ears while I broke out. Her face was so mean and tired I doubted anything would.

I’m shamed to say I let him keep me two days, even though I could’ve pried my way out easy while they slept. I didn’t quite want to sleep on the bare ground with snakes about. Snakes have always been a little hard for me. Pa used to say I was a pretty fair boy except about snakes. I’d worked my feelings around to where I could face them all right awake, but I didn’t like the idea of being asleep around them.