He gave a stiff shrug. “Until she marries, I suppose.”
I could tell it bothered him that he was unable to add a me after the marries. But Gideon was an honest fellow, and he couldn’t yet claim to have won any major portion of Rachel’s heart. She handled him in a friendly fashion: warmly, cheerfully, and exactly as she treated every other panting suitor.
I grinned. “So that’s where you’ll be doing your courting.”
He gave me a nasty look.
*
July sprang over the countryside in a purple carpet of clover, and I put up an entire cellar shelf’s worth of dandelion wine. Beyond the whir of Mama’s spinning wheel, the twitters of birds, the hum of dragonflies, the buzz of bumblebees, and in the evening the roar of crickets and tree frogs, came the hiss of the sweeping scythes. Haymaking had begun. Yet the Winter family still didn’t know that two of theirs were preparing their thoughts for departure, hearts filled with equal parts anticipation and anxiety, faces frequently turned westward, gazes intent with the determination to leave.
The temperature turned insufferably hot. We sweated our way to town for the Independence Day celebration and, surrounded by the din of clanging church, school, and farm bells, ate the marchpane cakes that had already started melting in Mama’s basket. The sun scorched the air and baked the fields until the wheat didn’t smell just like green growing things but a bit like the bread it was destined to become.
The only place hotter than the roasting fields was the summer kitchen. Betsy and Grace bickered incessantly, and every day I could feel my own mood reaching a boil quicker than the stew. More and more, I looked for ways to escape, and since the men took most of their meals in the fields, bringing them their nooning became my respite from the sweltering house.
On one such occasion, they didn’t even notice my approach, so focused were they on their haying. Before I could distinguish brother from brother, I could hear their music. The scythes sang notes as the blades cut the thick air.
I reached the line of windbreakers, stood still in the shade of the first tree, and admired the practiced, graceful ease with which they cradled the field of grass. Papa had hired Robert and Ed Welds to help, and they, along with Gideon, brought up the end of the scythe team.
I searched for Mr. Long’s broad back, and when I realized he wasn’t part of the line, I immediately felt piqued, rashly concluded he’d squandered a haymaking day by visiting the Goodriches, then became irritated with myself for caring. To shut up my disordered thoughts, I called across the field, “Dinnertime!”
Papa was the first to turn. His face shimmered with sweat, and when he got to my poplar’s flickering shade, he blew a sigh, pulled off his hat, and swiped his face and head with his sleeve before giving my braid a little tug by way of hello. He accepted the switchel jug and guzzled gratefully. “Ah!” he gasped. “Thanks, kitten.”
The others joined us. I should have returned to the house and left the men to their nooning, but it was too pleasant idling beside them as they picnicked in the nearby shock of hay. They ate enormous amounts of bread, cheese, and meat and, between bites, joked and tore into one another with grinned insults. Even Gideon seemed at ease.
I mostly attended to the Welds brothers, who would become my constant companions once we reached the Genesee Valley. At this stage, I couldn’t call them much more than acquaintances, despite their closeness to Gid. The nature of my chores kept me penned up most of the time, and I didn’t enjoy many informal occasions like this one to rub shoulders with the boys. The handful of furtive would-be pioneer meetings hadn’t deepened our friendship. The brothers had resigned themselves to my presence but clearly didn’t like it.
Now, however, exhausted to the point of garrulousness, they gave me a glimpse of their true selves. And from what I could tell, in many ways they were just as silly as Rachel.
Robert had a way of responding to my older brothers’ jests with rancor, as though he couldn’t discern mere teasing from genuine offense, and Gideon stepped in to smooth his friend’s ruffled feathers in such an automatic way that I figured he was accustomed to doing so. Ed, meanwhile, gazed blankly around him and was a good five beats behind in his guffaw whenever a joke stirred the team. Sometimes he entered the conversation with a completely aberrant comment or question: “I shouldn’t like switchel if it weren’t for the ginger, unless nutmeg instead of ginger flavored the drink, in which case I’d love it even more, because nutmeg beats all.” “Have you ever heard of mango fruit? How do you suppose a mango tastes?” “Do my boots look purple to you?”
I experienced a fissure of alarm at the prospect of taming the wilderness with these two, Mr. Hot Temper and Mr. Stupid Gudgeon.
Then I checked myself. What was I thinking? I wouldn’t be doing the taming. I’d be in the house doing what I always did: cooking, spinning, stitching, washing, cleaning.
Though the younger men kept up their raillery, Papa grew silent, his eyes on the sky. He abruptly stood. “I’m not liking the looks of those clouds. Best get the hay rolled before the rain can rot it.”
The others obliged him by hopping to their feet, shouting their thanks to me over their shoulders, and resuming their labor. I took my time packing up what little remained of the food and shoved the field keg deeper into the shade of the tree so the drink would stay cool.
They’d begun a song. I watched them scythe to the rhythm of their tune. Gideon had told me they sometimes raced, too. They’d work hard and steady, until nightfall or even later if the worrisome clouds held off and the moon could shine.
I would have liked to learn how to mow, to whet my blade on the grindstone before rushing to best Gideon’s pace, to hear my alto waver alongside Luke’s handsome baritone. My brothers would set me to raking fast enough if Papa would let them.
But he wouldn’t. He never would.
I trudged back to the house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lammas Day arrived, and we celebrated this first of August as we always did, by cramming ourselves into the wagon at dawn and making the journey to meeting. Mama, dignified in her best dress, held wrapped on her lap a beautiful round bread, the first from the new grain. The pastor would consecrate it, and the blessed loaf would become the center of our dinner table later.
My father looked pleased as he drove us to town, remarking on the sights along the way: the orange tiger lilies fringing the woods, an indigo bunting alighting on a branch in an iridescent flash, and the attractive stone fence Mr. Long and Jeb, his cousin, had built last month to replace the split-rail barrier that had been too short to hold their new horse.
Papa’s good spirits infected all of us in the rumbling, lurching wagon. The first sheaf of wheat he and the boys had harvested had been a good one. There was reason to be grateful.
Five hours later, when we finally returned to the farm, Mama spurred the girls and me into a whirl of work. The harvest table would reflect poorly on us if it didn’t offer the plentitude nature had made possible this year. By the time we began delivering steaming bowls and laden platters to the holding boards outside, the Winter men, along with Mr. Long and Jeb, occupied the benches on either side of the main table. When the Weldses arrived, the second table’s benches quickly filled. Mrs. Welds and her girls contributed the sweeter dishes to the feast, and the male company pronounced Rachel’s offering especially remarkable—no contest, the clear favorite.
What the boys really meant was that Rachel was the clear favorite. It was hard not to roll my eyes at their cajolery and her blushing demur. Her jam cake was good but not remarkable.