The Last Runaway (22 page)

I smile now to remember that in my last letter I said I was looking forward to the cold. How I long for summer now! For weeks there has been a thick blanket of snow on the ground, with more added every few days, and no thaw to melt it. Jack has cleared paths to the chickens and well and privy and barn, and regularly takes the horses out to break a path to Faithwell to deliver milk. Yet the snow is hard to get through, and the cold too drives us inside. When I go out in the mornings for the milking, my fingers turn so stiff that I can barely pull at the udders, and I have to warm them against the cows’ flanks. At least the beasts are warm, and their breath keeps the barn from freezing. The chickens stay in their house and lay little; occasionally one freezes to death and we have to eat it, which upsets me as that is not what they are meant for.

We are less productive now. It feels strange to be eating through what we worked so hard to store in the summer and autumn, even though of course that is why we stored it. Each day the jars in the pantry lose a member or two. Every week we kill a chicken. We are eating through the ham and bacon of the pig slaughtered last month. The bins of potatoes and carrots in the cellar are diminishing. Out in the barn the hay I thought such a mountain has already become more of a hill. And the corn crib is still full but the horses are eating into it, as well as the oats. When I witness this depletion, and the snow that is trapping us here, and the cold that keeps anything from growing, I get a queer, panicked feeling that we are going to run out of food and starve. Of course the Haymakers have lived through many such winters and are more confident. They are used to making everything we need rather than buying it. I can see Jack and Judith calculating daily, measuring and considering how to make what we have last. Yesterday Judith got out some ham steaks for dinner, then put one back without cooking it. That small gesture troubled me—though as it happened we had plenty to eat. I must trust them to get us through the winter, and assume that one day I will be as content and unconcerned as Dorcas, who maintains a hearty appetite. She did admit to me, though, that when they first moved from North Carolina she found the Ohio winters a trial.

I miss fresh food—all of our vegetables and fruits are pickled or dried, except for a few apples and potatoes and carrots. One food has been a revelation, however: Jack put a shovel heaped with dry corn into the fire so that the kernels popped into white blossoms. ‘Popcorn’ is the most delicious thing imaginable. Jack was so pleased I liked it that he made it for me three nights in a row, until Judith chided him.

As mentioned previously, I help with the milking each morning and evening, and it has become much easier now that the cows accept me, and I them. I had always thought of them as all alike—dumb beasts who stand in fields eating grass—but I know now that each has her own character, just like people. It took them some weeks to accept a new pair of hands touching them. Like horses and dogs, they are quick to sense uncertainty, and will play upon it, given the chance. I have learned to be firm with them, and they are now docile. Thee would smile at my arms, for they have grown with muscles I had never used before. My forearms are almost as big as my upper arms, and my shoulders are not as sloped as they once were. I should not care about such things, but my body looks peculiar to me—though Jack doesn’t mind, being accustomed to dairymaids’ arms.

After milking we have breakfast, and while I am clearing up, Judith and Dorcas make cheese and butter from the morning’s milk. When I finish in the kitchen I shell half a bushel of corn for the horses. This is the work I hate most, as it hurts my thumbs when I push the dried kernels off the cob. The bases of my thumbs have also grown as a result, and their tips are crisscrossed with scars. Eventually thee will not recognise me! At times it feels so futile an exercise to shell corn and have it eaten, then do so again the next morning, and the next. When shut up all winter in the barn, doing little other than eating and soiling the area around them, the animals come to seem like machines. I am sure I will be as glad as the horses and cows when spring comes and they can at last go out to pasture.

When we have finished our chores for the morning, Judith begins dinner and Dorcas and I sit by the stove and sew or knit. I am now working on the second red and white appliqué quilt I am making for her. I did not manage to convince her to let me make patchwork, but I do not mind so much now, as I am growing fonder of the simple cheerfulness of the design, especially during these grey months. It goes slowly, however: the cold and the stuffy air and the repetition of each day makes me slow-witted and less inclined to accomplish much. I make more mistakes, and must unpick them. When we were so busy in the autumn, I still managed to sew more than I do now. And it is hard to be so confined together; at times it makes me almost wild with frustration. I feel trapped here, frozen into a house and a family I still do not feel I belong to.

I miss the meadows of Dorset, which remained green all winter. I never appreciated them until faced with the prospect of months of brown, grey and white. I think now that the stunning show of leaves in red and yellow and orange in the autumn was one last gift from God to see us through these colourless winter months.

We rarely see anyone else, for they are shut up in their houses, waiting out the winter. Only occasionally does someone brave the cold and snow to come for milk and cheese. And the milliner Belle Mills came once to visit—in a sleigh! (That is what they call sledges. I have had to learn many new words.) Does thee recall the parrot a sailor once had in Bridport? Her arrival was like that parrot landing in Faithwell—all bright feathers amongst the snow. Judith and Dorcas didn’t say a word. I was so pleased to see her I’m afraid I cried, and Belle teased me, for I cry every time I am with her. She is the only person in Ohio whose friendship approaches what thee and I have—and yet she is as different from thee as American robins are from English ones. Robins here are big and brash, with bright chests, compared to the delicate, more subtle bird thee knows.

Belle brought me some beautiful tan silk I am hoping to use in a quilt when I have finished those for Dorcas. Then I will be able to make what I like, in the spring, when everything will come alive again.

Thy faithful friend,

Honor Haymaker

Sugaring

THE THAW WAS
like a fist unclenching, with the world—and Honor in it—expanding in the newly formed palm. It was surprising how little time it took for the cold to lose its dominance. One day Honor woke and the air felt different: still icy but the sharp end of it blunted and less insistent.

She was finishing the quilt for Dorcas, quilting it herself rather than having it done collectively at a frolic, for food stocks were low and it was not the time for such a celebration. As she sat over the small oval frame that held the fabric taut to make piercing with a needle easier, Honor realized she was not holding herself tense to combat the cold. Then Dorcas laughed at something Judith said—a sound Honor had not heard all winter—and she knew others were feeling the shift too.

That night, as she lay against Jack’s warm back, monitoring another change that had taken place deep in her body over the past weeks, Honor heard the hopeful sound of dripping outside. Within a day the track to Faithwell had turned into deep, sticky mud, which was almost as hard to get through as snow had been. On her way to Meeting, Honor stepped up to her knees in it, and Jack, Dorcas and Judith all had to pull to extract her. Even then she left behind a boot, and Jack had to fetch a spade to dig it out.

The next day he put taps into some of the maples in Wieland Woods to drain sap for syrup. After fresh corn, maple syrup was Honor’s favorite food in America. She had not thought anything could taste so sweet and earthy and resinous all at the same time. It was not a taste she could easily describe in letters to her family, and she wished she could send them some.

After the dawn milking Jack took her out to Wieland Woods to collect sap for her first sugaring. Boiling it down for syrup took an entire day, so they must start early, bringing back sap that had dripped out during the night. Honor was glad to have a moment alone with her husband—so rare except when they were in bed. Winter had brought the Haymakers into a tight huddle that at times made her want to scream. Now, perhaps, she could enjoy his company without the press of Judith and Dorcas around them. At least there had been no spontaneous visits from Donovan to raise tensions further. As Mrs. Reed had predicted, there were few runaways in the winter; that, combined with the deep snow, had kept him away.

Honor and Jack worked together in the woods, going from tree to tree and transferring sap from the pails hanging on the taps into larger buckets they carried. With its trees bare of leaves and the tangled thicket died back, Wieland Woods had lost some of its wildness during the winter, and Honor felt more comfortable and less threatened there. In the companionable silence, she decided to tell her husband news that would please him. She had held back during the cold, but the thaw shifted something inside her as well. “Jack—” she began.

At that moment a black man stepped out from behind a bur oak, and Jack and Honor jumped.

“Didn’t mean to scare you, sir, ma’am,” he said, removing his hat and rubbing a scraggly beard. “I heard they was Quakers up this way would look after a man if he asked.”

“We are not—”

“Thee is not far from Oberlin,” Honor interrupted her husband. “It is just three miles that way.” She pointed north. “When thee gets there, go to Mill Street—the second right off Main Street. There is a red house near where the street crosses over Plum Creek. Look for a candle in the back window, and they will help thee.”

Jack stared at her in astonishment.

The man nodded. “Thankee.” Pulling his hat down over his ears and wrapping his buttonless coat around him, he ran off in the direction she had indicated.

Jack glared at Honor. “How does thee know all of that?”

Honor could not meet his eyes, and instead studied the thin, transparent liquid in the pail. It would only turn brown after hours of boiling.

“We knew thee was leaving out victuals, but didn’t know thee was talking to them and giving such detailed instructions—and talking as well to others working on the Underground Railroad, it seems.”

Honor looked up. “Thee knew I was hiding food?”

“Of course. It is difficult to hide anything from a farmer. I suppose thee hid runaways as well?”

“A few times.”

“I thought so.”

In a way it was a relief to have her activities out in the open. “Why did thee not say anything?”

“Mother wanted to, of course. She was furious that thee disobeyed us and was putting us at risk of being fined. And that thee was attracting that slave catcher.” Jack picked up the larger bucket and moved to the next tree. “But I asked her to let thee continue.”

Honor followed him. “Why?”

Jack took the smaller pail from the tap and poured the sap into the bucket. Then he gave her a sad, sober look. “I wanted to make thee happy, Honor, for I knew that thee was not. I thought if I could let thee act on thy principles, it would make thee more content to be my wife.”

Honor stared at him. She had no idea he had been trying so hard to please her. Taking a breath, she reached out a hand, but he had already turned to the next tree. She should speak, tell him what she had been meaning to say, but the words were stuck in her throat. Once the moment had passed, it was impossible to bring up the subject again, especially as Jack was careful to keep his back to her.

When they finished emptying the pails, Honor and Jack took the sap back to the farmyard. Jack had erected a temporary shack there, for boiling down sap created so much steam that it was best not to do it in the house. Judith and Dorcas had built a fire and hung a cast-iron cauldron over it. They would take turns stirring the sap all day, reducing it to a thick, dark syrup.

Honor had wondered if Jack would remain quiet, but he immediately announced that they had seen a runaway in Wieland Woods, and repeated what Honor had told the man.

Judith Haymaker glanced at her son as she took one of the buckets from him, and then at Honor. “Thee must not start that nonsense again,” she declared, pouring the sap into the cauldron. “I have deferred to Jack’s wishes on this subject long enough. I am sure he will agree with me that not only must thee not put this farm at risk—thee must also think of thy and Jack’s child. It would not be fair for him to come into the world with the farm ruined.”

Honor turned red. “What?” Jack barked.

Judith widened her half-smile, though it did little to warm her face. “Honor, surely thee did not think thee could hide such a thing from me? It is clear in thy face and in how thee walks.” She turned to Jack. “Thee is a man and would not notice such things. I thought to wait for Honor to tell thee herself. I am sorry it has come out in this way, but thee needs to know, to help thy wife understand how much is at stake if she persists in this foolishness.”

Jack turned to her. “Is this true? Thee is with child?”

Honor nodded.

Jack’s anger at her melted like snow in the sun. He put an arm around her. “I am glad.”

“Thee must promise not to get involved again in helping runaways,” Judith continued. “It is illegal, it is dangerous, and the Haymakers cannot tolerate it any longer. We have suffered enough already.”

“What—what does thee mean?”

The Haymakers exchanged glances. Judith sighed. “Back in North Carolina we lost our farm from having to pay a large fine when we hid a runaway. There have been fines to pay even before this recent Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. The new law is simply more insistent, and harsher.”