After sliding the purse into his coat, Mr. Rush wandered across the street. Then my oldest brother trudged back to the meetinghouse. No one, not even our sister Grace, could have worn a sicklier visage. His skin was pasty white, and his eyes, as soon as they met mine, bulged in alarm. He immediately looked away and veered toward the crowd outside the doors.
Where this money had come from, how much it amounted to, and why it had left Matthew’s possession were worrisome questions. They made me extremely uneasy. No one but I, however, seemed to have witnessed what had happened. Indeed, Matthew and Mr. Rush had enjoyed almost complete privacy in their exchange. That was because of the second shocker.
After the service, nearly the entire congregation had flitted toward a carriage to welcome the late-arriving Goodrich family. I had heard about the Goodriches. I knew Mr. Goodrich had inherited the mill and was already stirring Middleton’s curiosity with his plans for improvements. What I hadn’t known was that Mr. Goodrich, besides sporting a single son, had fathered a pack of beautiful daughters. From my wagon perch, I could examine all of them: five elegantly dressed, prettily mannered, fashionably dark-haired, dark-eyed beauties.
Mr. Long already seemed on very good terms with the oldest. Similarly tall and handsome, they stood facing each other right outside the meetinghouse doorway like a newly married couple. Though I couldn’t discern the particulars of their conversation, they obviously spoke naturally, like good friends. And, every so often, Miss Goodrich’s laughter trilled like a merry bell.
I sniffed and folded my arms. It was a wonder she found anything to amuse her in Mr. D.U.L.’s conversation. She was probably as foolish as Rachel Welds.
And that was the third circumstance: Rachel. She had also squeezed her presence into the welcoming crowd, but as she turned away from two of the Goodrich girls, she ran smack into my brother.
Luke, not Gideon.
A teasing encounter ensued. Luke joked. Rachel tittered and blushed. Luke joked again. Rachel tittered some more. And directly behind Luke, Gideon stood and seethed.
Poor Gid. He was a mite short for Rachel to spot behind the beefy Luke and too worshipful by far to engage her in the kind of breezy flirtation Luke was so good at.
Worst of all was Luke’s expression of intrigue. Rachel had captured his notice. Gideon, standing stiffly behind the bold Luke, was probably recollecting every instance his older brother had wrangled something dear from him: the favorite pup, the favorite piglet, the favorite toy, the favorite treat.
Stiffly, Gideon turned and stomped to the wagon. Perhaps the sympathy I felt for him was written across my face, because he quickly looked away from me and busied himself by hitching the oxen.
After climbing into the wagon, he sat heavily, hunched and somber, his eyes downcast, his hands loosely folded. We observed the silence until the crowd began dispersing. I noted with a sensation as sharp as vinegar how charmingly Mr. Long took Miss Goodrich’s hand as they said their good-byes. I supposed he saved his great store of sarcasm just for me.
Gideon’s sigh interrupted my peevish thoughts. He began talking, softly but earnestly. “I’m tired of wanting things I can’t have, Harry. I need my own place and can almost afford it. I hope you understand why I have to leave.” The entire time he spoke, he stared straight ahead, eyes burning, face rigid.
I said what I knew he needed to hear. “Yes, Gid, I understand.”
But I didn’t say what I’d started thinking. Maybe I need the same. Maybe there’s nothing—and no one—here for me, either.
Maybe I’ll go with you.
CHAPTER FIVE
Though the idea of joining Gideon had initially sprung like an inspired and viable course of action, it almost as quickly lost its appeal. In fact, I felt ill simply thinking about leaving Middleton. Home became a cherished picture constantly adorning my thoughts. The fact that in this vision, among my family and the rolling, springtime landscape, Mr. Long had also begun to appear …
Well. That was a development I preferred not to ponder.
Chores prevented me from dwelling too deeply on this disturbing shift in my sentiments. It was May, and May didn’t wait for humans to exercise their feelings. May could care less about a person’s hopes and fears. May was the season of the plow.
The month began with a warm spell, and the men spent the first week after that fateful Sunday turning the soil, letting what hid all winter long greet the sun and saturate the air with the scent of earth. The following Monday, they began planting the Indian corn.
That day, in an hour of rare harmony, Betsy and Grace talked gaily while taking turns at the butter churn. I listened from where I stood over the stew pot. Their conversation made my mouth water, for what they anticipated was true: Mama would contrive some very good things with the results of this planting, from johnnycakes to Indian pudding. Luke, having returned to the house to collect the ax handle he’d left seasoning on the spit hooks, leaned over the girls to add his own personal vision of paradise: “And don’t forget the corn whiskey.”
By midweek, the weather took a turn for the worse. Nevertheless, Mama, who wore out the almanac in her efforts to time our planting according to the constellations, put me to work in the kitchen garden. The moon had begun to decrease, and she insisted it was time to commence the radishes.
“What difference does it make?” The afternoon was wet, yet here I was, planting radishes and looking as mud-caked as a freshly dug root vegetable.
“Radishes taper downward, dear,” she murmured. She was just as damp as I was and on her knees two rows over, worrying about the progress of her peas and searching their curly tendrils for blight. “You need to plant them downward at the decrease of the moon.”
A strand of wet hair had plastered itself across my face. I peeled it away and muttered, “Stuff and nonsense.” But I kept digging.
By the end of the week, the garden was planted. I resumed my inside chores, the ones that kept me busy regardless of the season.
The men, in contrast, had few consistent labors. Their duties changed according to nature’s whims and schedule, and in May, nature demanded a lot. This was a good thing, particularly for Matthew. As the month progressed, between the cooking, mending, and scrubbing, in the early mornings and the late evenings, I kept an eye on my oldest brother. I hadn’t forgotten what I’d witnessed at the beginning of May. It was a relief the plowing and planting yoked him to the land. He had no time to ride to town, neither to work extra jobs nor to squander his earnings at the card tables with the likes of Isaac Rush.
That changed toward the end of the month. Most of the planting was done, a worrisome circumstance when it came to Matthew, who started slipping to town again, but a good thing for Gideon, who could now steal away from the farm to improve his savings. I helped. It was pole-wood season, for the trees were vibrant with sap, and their busily spreading bark was easily removed. Gid and I cut long poles from the hickory and white oak saplings in the woodlot’s lowland, then kept most of them soft for splitting and pounding by fixing them under rocks in the rushing stream. Armfuls of splint wood and hoop poles promised a fair bit of money from the town cooper, but we wasted a few of our poles on swordfights. Gid usually managed more hits than I did, but I almost always got my revenge by pushing him into the creek. I would have liked to have devoted more of our time to fun, but he wasn’t as easy to tease into foolery as he’d been in the past. He was on a mission.
His single-mindedness influenced me, and I also ensured some personal savings by turning splinters into baskets. Mama approved of these endeavors. Perhaps she thought my newfound interest in moneymaking reflected a womanly impulse to supply myself with a dowry.
Marriage, however, had never seemed less likely.