I nervously plucked at my fringe.
Wide-eyed, she gave her head a little shake and pressed her lips together as if regretting the outburst, then started over with “Let me take your cape, Harriet. Come to the fire. Right here, it’s the best chair. You must be hungry.”
“Thank you.” I gratefully fell into the rocker and leaned forward to seek the warmth.
Mrs. Huber situated Gid’s and my boots on the hearthstone.
Her daughters, one with the teakettle dangling from a hand, stood frozen, their mouths hanging open.
I slouched under the inspection and scrunched the fabric of my skirt. It’s only hair. Not like I’m missing a limb.
Their mother shooed them. “Warm the biscuits and broth, Kate. Fran, bring up a jar of my strawberry jam.” The girls jerked into action, and Mrs. Huber pressed a hand to her cheek, her gaze sweeping my head again. She made a sound of distress. When my brother and her son returned, she hurried their way, as if relieved to escape the sight of me, and set about getting them situated, taking Gid’s winter gear, urging him to the other rocker, and chattering the entire time.
Lance followed my brother but paused by the fire to add a piece of wood. Rising, he turned and parted his smiling mouth, poised to speak.
Immediately, the smile reversed itself. After a moment of stunned silence, he coughed, sidled to Gid’s other side, and began to question my brother on his planned purchase of land, wanting the particulars on the parcel’s size and his intentions for it, practically performing an interrogation.
In short, avoiding an interaction with me.
I wrinkled my nose at the fire and fought the urge to reassure him on my equal lack of interest. No need to panic, young man.
Mr. Huber entered the house, shrugged off his coat, and carried his ax to the hearth. Upon spotting me, the big man did a double take, then struggled to erase his astonishment as Mrs. Huber presented my brother and me. “How do you do?” He pasted on a smile, bowed, and swiftly sidestepped toward the men. After sitting heavily beside his son, he reached for a jar under the bench, scooped out some fat, and began rubbing it over his ax’s blade. Soon, he was adding his own questions about the Holland Land Company to his son’s inquiries.
I was fine with being ignored and avoided, fine with not talking. Chilled to the bone, I only wanted to get warm, eat, and sleep. I held my hands to the fire, anxious to accomplish the first two goals so I could seek the reprieve of the last. Meanwhile, Mrs. Huber shared recollections of my mother, their youth, and wintertime capers, her tone wistful but her eyes militantly averted from my cropped hair.
The daughters weren’t nearly as discreet. They wasted no time in warming up our supper, clearly impatient to resume their ogling. Mrs. Huber ordered the girls to serve Gid and me where we sat by the fire.
As hungry as I was, I had difficulty enjoying the food, all too aware of the girls’ stares.
Kate’s stitchery was an untouched puddle of threads in her lap. Interrupting her mother’s ice-skating account, she blurted, “Was it the sickness that made you go bald?”
“Kate.” Mrs. Huber stopped knitting to elbow her daughter.
“She’s not bald,” Fran said. She was sitting at my feet, toying with her long red braid while eyeing my short hair. “Bet it was awfully pretty. So golden … like the blond locks of a fairy-tale princess.”
“Was it the sickness, dear? Did it”—Mrs. Huber cleared her throat—“fall out?”
Everyone, even the men, gazed at me expectantly.
I shook my head and met my brother’s wry glance. “It was just a bad case of lice.”
A squeak escaped Kate, and Fran, horror filling her face, fell backward and held her hair protectively behind her.
“They’re long gone now,” I said quickly.
“Of course they are,” Mrs. Huber said, frowning at her daughters. “The pests can’t survive without hair for nesting.” She sighed over her knitting. “But what a shame, what a terrible shame, for Fran’s right—your hair must have been a glorious sight, as pale as it is. Still, it will grow, never fear, and in just three or four years you’ll have your crowning glory back again.” This last assurance she spoke mostly to Lance, her gaze earnest.
He flared his eyes at his mother in warning before shifting a frown in my direction. With a shake of his head, he dismissed me. Then he turned to Gid and asked him about the girth of his cattle.
*
After being subjected to so much undesirable attention at the Hubers’, I imagined the rest of our journey would prove uncomplicated by comparison. I was wrong. It was pure work: sometimes tedious, sometimes hair-raising, and almost always freezing. Alternating with relatively uneventful days sprang stretches of terror, the sled slipping backward when the oxen lost their footing on an icy incline, our road narrowing to little more than a snowy trail snugly winding around a mountain with the yawning gulf below, a stream’s ice cracking ominously under the weight of our crossing sleigh, and the world disappearing completely one afternoon when snow began to fall in earnest, and the wind blew hard, and whiteness, spewed from the clouds and whipped up from below, thoroughly blinded us.
I steadied oxen, dragged aside downed tree limbs blocking our way, shoveled, trudged, and leaped. And, happily, no petticoats tripped me. No skirts slowed me down. My pantaloons especially pleased me, but I appreciated the sturdy warmth of all my gear.
The only thing I missed was my hair—though not in the way Sally Huber would assume. I didn’t long for it as a lost symbol of my femininity (how stupid; men could grow their hair out, too, if they wanted!); I merely wished for its warmth. When I’d worn it in a braid or a loose, low bun, it had partly covered my neck. Now, unless I remembered to wear a scarf, I felt the bite of the wind on my skin. I spent many hours hunching my shoulders, shivering, and sticking my gloved hands in the pockets of the woolen coat I’d appropriated from Gid’s boyhood wardrobe.
“Put on your scarf,” my brother would sigh, his exasperated tone telling me he was getting sick of reminding me.
I would. Then the next day I’d forget again.
Even more than my gloves, the coat pockets protected my hands. Before we left home, I’d improved them with extra lining, and they were deliciously warm, twin havens against the benumbing cold. In the right pocket I carried around a small treasure and rubbed its smoothness. This was a habit I probably should have broken, since it frequently turned my thoughts toward home and everything and everyone I was missing. Yet, conflictingly, the small charm comforted me in stressful circumstances, like when the axle broke or Fancy went temporarily missing or the mountains, my sleeping giants, slipped from view.
It was the spile Daniel Long had given me a year ago. Every so often, in the rare moments my brother and I weren’t side by side, I’d take out the sugaring spout and trail my finger along the carefully carved vine and D.U.L., the three initials I used to mock with the self-assurance of a vain girl certain of her superior appeal.
Finally, I’d trace the initials Mr. Long had included to tease me. H.S.L.: Harriet Submit Long. She was someone I’d almost met. We’d passed each other in another life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN