We barely waited for Phineas to pull on the reins before we leaped out of the wagon.
Gid grinned at the approaching stampede. “Look what I did.”
I ran up the three steps to the door, laughing breathlessly, “Oh, did you make that?”
We crowded around the new arrival, and Gid stooped so the children could see, too.
“It’s as red as a crabapple,” Ephraim said.
“And not much bigger.” Phineas rose. He glanced over Gid’s shoulder. “My sister?”
“Just resting.”
Phineas exhaled.
We followed my brother inside.
Marian was half-hidden under blankets in the wall berth, but she was sitting up, knitting, and looking pleasantly peaceful, as if she’d merely sat down to rest rather than recently endured an exhausting delivery. At our arrival, she put aside the needles and yarn and smiled at our soft greetings and the children’s not-so-soft celebratory yips and kisses.
Behind them, Daniel wondered aloud, “Is that a robin’s nest in the bush?” When the children sped to the doorway, he urged them ahead of him, tossed a wink our way, and escorted the wild ones out.
When the door closed, Gid shuffled past Phineas and presented the baby to Marian, his entire person radiating reverence.
She tucked the infant in her arms and kissed the downy head.
“Well, sister”—Phineas bent to bestow on Marian his own crown kiss—“what is it?”
“A baby.”
“Of any particular kind?”
“It’s a girl.”
“Ah.” Phineas smiled at me and bent again, this time to say in a stage whisper, “So is Freddy.”
Gid turned to look at me questioningly.
I rubbed the back of my hot neck and shrugged.
In a similarly dramatic voice, Marian said, “I know.”
Her brother straightened, disgruntled. “It would have been nice to let me in on the secret.”
“It wasn’t mine to tell.”
“Hmm.” He crossed his arms. “So, everything go smoothly?”
“As smoothly as possible.”
“Your sister…” Gid’s voice caught. He shook his head, his face alarmingly filled with emotion. “She’s amazing.”
Marian gave him an indulgent smile. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“That’s just it,” Gid said, very serious. “You could have. You truly could have. You had everything under control.”
I laughed. “Didn’t you help at all?”
“Well…” He glanced at Marian, obviously seeking permission.
She shrugged. She wasn’t missish.
Color seeped into his face, but his tone was quietly proud when he admitted, “I did catch the baby.”
“And cleaned the knife,” Marian said. “He cut the cord, too.” To Rachel and me, she added, “And never once turned squeamish or fainted.”
He beamed. “It was a miracle. The whole experience … miraculous.”
Phineas snorted. “Come now, Mr. Winter. Babies get born every minute of every day.”
Gid gave him a very un-Gideon-like look: disdainful, dismissive. Then his gaze fell on the infant girl. After a moment, he said in a voice rough with tenderness, “And every time it happens, it’s a miracle.”
Marian’s eyes welled. Maybe she wasn’t as calm and collected as I’d thought. She caught my brother’s hand and squeezed. “It is. You’re right. It really is.”
*
I had feared exposure for so long that, in preparation, I’d mentally rehearsed speeches to explain my foray into boyhood. For a long time at Phin and Marian’s, however, no one pried for details. It helped, of course, that so many of us were packed into the cabin and too busy to dwell on my escapade. Daniel constructed some long-awaited corner shelves as a gift to the mother, Rachel took over Marian’s housekeeping chores, I cooked dinner, and Gid traveled all the way to his homestead, then came all the way back, just to present Marian with the ingenious cradle he and Daniel had concocted: a hollowed-out half log that, of course, rocked naturally.
Meanwhile, Phineas, when he wasn’t playing with the three older children, resumed his irreverent teasing.
At one point, Rachel’s gaze met mine. She flared her eyes.
Phin’s jokes were getting old.
Rachel was leaning over the washing barrel, scrubbing the cast-iron kettle, her strong arms agitating the dirty water, when, out of the blue, Marian asked from the bed, “Why’d you do it?”
No need to ask what she meant by it.
Before I could answer, Rachel did. “She was sick of being a girl.”
Phineas sauntered over. “Sick of being female? I don’t blame her. What an awful fate. Hey—” He frowned at the dirty water stain Rachel had painted down his shirt with a slap of her washing rag. “This is my best shirt.”
“Go away,” Rachel ordered without looking at him. She was practically murdering the kettle with her scrubbing. “Or your best trousers are next.”
Later, when Phineas and I found ourselves alone outside the door, he said, “So Freddy’s really Harry. Not much of a difference there.” He selected three pieces of firewood from the stack on the landing.
“Harry’s short for Harriet.” I grabbed a handful of sticks from the kindling crate.
“Who likes to wear trousers. And Daniel Long, I presume, likes Harriet. When she’s wearing trousers or a dress?”
I smiled weakly. “Both, I guess.”
“And now Gideon likes Marian, I think because she reminds him of his mother. And Marian, who enjoys bossing everyone around, grown men included, might just like Gideon. And Rachel hates me because she’s decided to hate all men.”
“Or maybe because you act like an ass around her.”
He smiled sheepishly. “We’re deranged, every one of us. Doing things we shouldn’t.” He grabbed a fourth piece of wood. The armload already reached his jaw, but he was eyeing another piece. “Take my fiddling. Back home in England, my father—a hard man—put up with my playing as long as I was a boy, even encouraged it at times, liking how my musical bent proved useful at all the junkets, a talent to accompany the contra dances and cotillions. But he wanted me to give up playing when I turned sixteen, saw fiddling as a boy’s pastime, the sort of thing you only do as long as you fly kites and throw hoops. He ordered me to focus on the farm and set aside the instrument until I had a son to pass it on to.”
“So you moved?”
“So I moved. I knew I had to farm. But here I can do it however I see fit and keep my passion, too. I need music. More than I need a father’s approval.”
His words got me thinking about the Genesee Valley in a different way. Yes, it was the ideal destination for men like Gid—those New England second, third, fourth, fifth sons who wanted more than their meager inheritance back home would ever give them. But I wondered how many people pioneered for other reasons. Reinvention, escape from rules, freedom to make their own decisions. Or just the chance to be themselves. All of these reasons, they were mine, too.
“I think you did the right thing,” I said. “You should keep your music. It matters, if only because you decide it does. Plus, you’re very good at it.” I reached for the door but hesitated before opening it. “You’ve got that in common with Rachel. Too bad you two can’t get along.”
“Rachel.” He shook his head, then murmured quietly, slowly, and without a shred of humor, “Rachel Welds terrifies me.”
*
Marian shifted the infant to her shoulder and patted the tiny bottom until her daughter burped.
I smiled. The eruption sounded loud in the empty cabin.
My friends had maneuvered the other children outside again, to let their new sister sleep undisturbed for an hour. I’d stayed behind to make Mama’s bread dough, so it could rise sufficiently for baking. It was a good recipe. Tomorrow was Sunday, so there’d be no cooking. This would give the housemates some bread to go with their cold supper.
When I finished, I swiped the table clean, covered the bowl, and stowed it on one of the new corner shelves. The interior glowed rosily with the late light. Daniel, Gid, and I would need to leave soon if we hoped to reach the cabin before nightfall.