The Last Runaway

Corn

JACK HAYMAKER WAS like a pulled muscle that Honor sensed every time she moved. She found she was looking out for him on the days when she went to the Haymaker farm to buy milk. Usually he was out of sight, and his absence was both a disappointment and an anticipation of his eventual appearance. Occasionally, though, she caught a glimpse of him coming out of the barn, or walking behind the cows in the pasture, or hitching the horses to a wagon full of surplus milk. When she did see him, it was like looking at the sun-she could not do so directly, but only glance, and hide her reaction. And whenever she did look, Jack was already smiling, even when not looking back at her. He always seemed to know that he had her attention.

At Meeting, when he sat across the room from her in the men’s section, his presence was so disruptive Honor began to think she would never be able to concentrate on the still small voice inside herself while he was in the same room. Afterward, when everyone stood chatting outside the Meeting House, she hoped he would not approach her and Abigail and Adam. In such a small community, every gesture was noted. He must have understood this, for he remained talking with the other young men, laughing and scuffling in the dried mud on the road so that his white shirt grew dusty. But though his eyes were not directly on her, Honor could feel him there, and wondered that no one else seemed to notice the connection.

He was not an especially handsome man: his features were flat and his eyes small and close set-though he was clean shaven, which Honor preferred to the beard that lined the jaws of most Quaker men. What made him most attractive was that he was attracted to her. Another’s interest can be a powerful stimulant. She could feel his eyes on her as an almost physical pressure.

At the Haymakers’ frolic, Honor was glad she had the familiar, steadying task of quilting to keep her occupied. Yet even as she worked, she knew Jack Haymaker would arrive at the day’s end to join the women for supper. While she was skilled enough to keep the mounting tension from affecting her stitches, after a few hours her wrists and lower back ached and her shoulders were tight. Coupled with the heavy heat she had not yet grown used to, she felt a headache creeping up. By the time Jack appeared with the other men she could barely see him for the pulsating lights before her eyes and the pain at her temples.

As the porch and parlor began to fill with people, Honor slipped through the kitchen and out of the back door, where she stumbled to a well in the center of the yard. After drawing up the bucket, she leaned against the curved stone wall and drank from a tin mug left out for the purpose. Then she took a deep breath and gazed up at the darkening sky, dotted with a few stars. It was still and hot, and fireflies blinked in the farmyard. Honor watched them flickering and marveled that insects could light up from within.

“Is thee all right, Honor?”

Of course he had followed her out, though she had not meant him to. “I was a little hot.”

“’Tis a hot night, even outside. I wonder at everyone willingly crammed into the parlor.” Jack Haymaker spoke with a faint drawl.

A firefly landed on Honor’s sleeve and began walking up her shoulder, its tail still blinking. As she craned her neck to look down at it, Jack chuckled. “Don’t be scared. It’s just a lightning bug.” He placed his finger in its path. Honor tried not to think about the pressure of his touch. When the firefly crawled onto his finger, he lifted it up and let it fly off, signaling its escape route with sparks of light.

“We do not have fireflies in England,” she said.

“Really? Why not?”

“Many things are different there.”

“Like what?”

Honor looked around. “The land is more-ordered. Fields there are divided by hedgerows and are greener. It is not so hot there, and there are not so many trees.”

Jack folded his arms. “Sounds like thee prefers England.”

“I-” Words had tripped her. It would have been better to say nothing. “That is not what I meant.”

“What did thee mean?”

Thinking back over what she had said, Honor understood she had made the mistake of presenting England in a better light. She would have to praise Ohio somehow. Americans liked that. “I do like the firefl-the lightning bugs,” she said. “They are cheerful and welcoming.”

“More so than the people?”

Honor sighed. Again he was taking her few words and twisting them. It exhausted her. This was why she so often kept quiet.

“It cannot be easy, living with Abigail and Adam,” he continued.

Honor frowned. Though she welcomed sympathy from the right person, she did not know Jack well enough to accept it from him. As much as his physical presence drew her in, she wanted to back away from his words.

“I’d best go in,” she said.

“I will come with thee.”

They went back through the kitchen and into the crowded parlor, where Dorcas Haymaker and her friend Caroline turned their faces toward them like two silver plates catching the light. Caroline’s cheeks were red-rubbed with mullein, Honor suspected, a trick Grace had used to brighten her cheeks when she thought she was looking too pale. Quaker rouge, she’d heard outsiders call the plant.

Jack did not seem to notice his sister’s friend. “Will thee eat?” he said. “Quilting all afternoon must give thee an appetite.”

Honor could not tell whether he was teasing her or not. It was hard to know with Americans: they laughed at things she did not find funny, and were silent when she wanted to smile. She said nothing, but stepped up to the tables heavy with food, hoping he would not follow, and that the buzzing in her head would subside. She did not know why he had such a physical effect on her. His easy manner unnerved her, much the way America itself did. Honor was accustomed to an efficient, organized life, and hers had been anything but that since leaving Dorset. Jack Haymaker was part of the American chaos that pulled at her, making her want to step back.

She surveyed the field of food laid out before her. It was already predictable: the shoulder of ham, the roast beef, the mounds of mashed potatoes, the string beans, the johnnycakes, the army of pies. She swallowed a surge of nausea. What she longed for was a buttered crumpet, smoked mackerel pâté, a lamb cutlet, strawberries and cream-food prepared simply and easily digested, not served in a heap. Then she spied a bowl of gooseberries, pushed to the back of the table, and reached for it.

At that moment there was a stirring in the crowd around the food, and it parted to reveal Judith Haymaker, carrying a large platter piled with ears of steaming corn, stripped of their husks and tassels. “Corn’s ready!” she cried, her face bright with heat and anticipation. For once she was smiling fully. There was a scramble as women moved dishes so that she could set the plate down in the middle of the table.

“First corn of the season,” Jack explained as people surged forward to pick out ears. “The ears are smaller than they will be next month, but they’re tenderer too. Where is thy plate? They will go fast.” He reached over and picked up an ear between thumb and finger. “Quick, it’s hot!”

Honor had no choice but to take a plate, and Jack deposited two ears of corn upon it. “I-” she began to protest, but Jack talked over her.

“Thee can have it with butter, if thee likes. See the plate there with the slab of butter? That’s for rolling corn in. But I think the first corn is better plain. It’s so sweet, it doesn’t need butter’s help. Come.” He led her to a bench pushed up against the wall and waited for her to sit so that he could hand her the plate and join her. Honor could feel more eyes on them besides Dorcas and Caroline-Adam and Abigail, Judith Haymaker, Caleb Wilson the blacksmith. Caroline had glittering eyes and a hard stare.

Honor ducked her head and studied her ear of corn, each kernel like a translucent tooth. Jack was already gnawing at his, turning it around and around as his teeth cut away the kernels with a chomping sound like a horse, or a deer crashing through undergrowth. Honor could not bear to look. Her brothers, Samuel, even Adam Cox would never make such a noise when they ate. Jack Haymaker ate joyously, brutally.

Dropping his spent corncob onto the plate they shared, he stood to go for more and noticed hers, untouched. “Does thee not like corn?”

Honor hesitated. “I have never eaten it on the cob.”

“Ah.” Jack smiled. “Then thee has a treat in store. This I must see.” To her embarrassment he remained in front of her, looking down, with his broad grin and his hair messy and a kernel of corn sticking to his chin. If they hadn’t been watching Honor and Jack before, everyone was now. She flushed a deep, hot red but knew she had no choice. To hesitate longer would draw even more attention. Picking up the ear, she turned it as if trying to find the best place to begin biting.

“Go on, Honor,” Jack said. “Jump in.”

Honor closed her eyes and bit down, slicing the kernels with her teeth. She opened her eyes. Never had she tasted anything so fresh and sweet. This was corn in its purest form, a mouthful of life. Turning the cob, she bit again and again, to savor the taste, so different from the other corn dishes she’d eaten over the past weeks. Then she couldn’t stop, and bit all the way up and down the cob until it was bare.

Jack laughed. “That did thee good. Welcome to Ohio, Honor. Shall I fetch thee another?”

Jack Haymaker came into Cox’s Dry Goods the day after the frolic, toward the end of the afternoon when the final rush was over and Honor was folding material while Adam Cox recorded the day’s takings. Though she tried not to show it, she started when Jack entered, and her chest grew tight. She greeted him, then concentrated on the fabric she was wrapping around the bolt-the same cream with rust diamonds that Mrs. Reed had bought for her daughter the month before. Earlier she had asked Adam’s permission to cut a small piece of it to add to the scraps she’d saved from Grace’s brown dress and Belle’s yellow silk.

Jack turned to Adam, who had paused in his writing, his pen steady over his accounts book. “I have finished delivering a batch of cheese to the college,” he announced, “and thought I’d offer Honor a lift back, if thee is done with her. She must be tired after a long day here.”

Adam glanced between Jack and Honor, the relief that crossed his face telling her more than any words could: Jack was courting her, with Adam’s tacit blessing. Her life, which had been so uncertain these last few months, now had a needle hovering over it, ready to tack it into place. She did not feel secured, though, but rather as she had when she stepped off the Adventurer in New York, the land pitching and heaving under her feet.

“Of course,” Adam replied. “I can finish up here.” He began to write again. As Honor reached for her shawl-redundant in the heat, but a woman always carried one-hanging on a peg on the wall behind him, she glanced down at his ledger. 11 needles sharpened @ 1 cent/needle: 11 cents. 5 pairs scissors sharpened @ 5 cents/pair: 25 cents. 3 yards coarse calico, he was writing. From this angle she could see the bald spot on top of his head.

It had not rained that afternoon to break the heat. Driving south down Main Street in the Haymakers’ wagon, they could hear thunder rumbling in the distance, and the sky west of them was dark. Jack glanced sideways at her. “Don’t worry, it is still a ways off. I will get thee home before the storm.”

“I am not frightened,” Honor said-though she was, a little. American thunderstorms were much more dramatic than any she had witnessed in England. The air would thicken over the course of a day until the tension was almost unbearable, the far-off thunder and lightning promising release. Then the rain would burst out from the massed black clouds, the lightning that had been held back suddenly overhead and simultaneous with the crashing thunder. It was loud, ruthless, violent. Honor had never been caught outside in an Ohio thunderstorm, and did not want to be now. Adam’s borrowed buggy would have been quicker than the Haymaker wagon, or she could have waited out the storm in the safety of the shop. But she could not ask Jack to turn back.

As they passed Mill Street, Honor caught sight of Mrs. Reed turning down it. The black woman looked over and noted Honor and Jack together, then nodded, but did not smile. Her straw hat was trimmed this time with clusters of tiny white flowers that Honor had seen along roadsides.

“Thee knows her?” Jack did not sound pleased.

“She is a customer. What are the flowers on her hat?”

“Boneset. Used to treat fever. Don’t they have it in England?”

“Perhaps. Flowers look different here, even when they have the same name.”

Jack grunted. In the distance, thunder rumbled again, louder now.

Sitting next to Jack in the wagon felt nothing like sitting next to Adam, or Old Thomas from Wellington; nor was it like what she had felt when walking with Samuel back home. It was not just that he smelled of fresh hay even when covered with the mud and sweat of a day’s work. It was the raw, wordless connection, the buzz of electric tension in the air around them and the space between them that surprised her. She was painfully aware of him. Every breath he took, every toss of his head or roll of his shoulder or flick of his wrist as he guided the horses registered deep within her. She let her eyes rest on his forearm, exposed by his rolled sleeves so that she could see each blond hair pointing in the same direction, like wheat in the wind.

This is what lust is, she thought, her cheeks burning with shame. She had not felt such a thing with Samuel: she had known him since they were children, and he was more like a brother. Perhaps what he felt for the Exeter woman was like this with Jack, she thought. For the first time, she allowed herself to consider with a steady mind how Samuel had felt and why he had done what he did.

“Corn’s growing,” Jack commented as they passed cornfields cut out of the woods between Oberlin and Faithwell. He said little else on the half-hour drive other than to reassure Honor that the lightning hadn’t come any closer. Otherwise he hummed a tune under his breath that she did not recognize.

At Abigail’s house-Abigail on the porch, gaping-Honor thanked Jack for the lift as he helped her down, his hand lingering on her elbow. He nodded. “We beat that storm, eh?”

By the day’s end at Adam’s store she had been hungry and exhausted. But that night Honor ate nothing and slept little. The storm never came, and the next morning it was as hot and still and close as before.

“Corn’s almost tall enough,” Jack said the following Saturday as he again gave her a lift back from Oberlin. “Not quite ready, though.”

The third time she rode with him, he pulled the wagon off the road by a cornfield. They sat looking over the corn, now higher than a man, the ears swollen, the tassels long and silky, the stalks rustling.

“Honor, this corn is ready. Does thee agree?”

Honor swallowed. Was this how American courtship proceeded? One conversation at a frolic, three rides in a wagon, and a coupling in a field? Then the banns would be read and they would marry: first greeting to marriage bed in less than two months. In America time seemed to be buckling: stretching and contracting before her, the steady rhythm Honor had been accustomed to disrupted. Either it was slowed down-on board the Adventurer, while waiting for letters to and from her family, during hot afternoons with Abigail on the porch; or it speeded up-Grace’s death, Abigail and Adam’s marriage, Jack’s expectations. It made her breathless and unable to think.

“Honor?”

Did she have a choice? She could say no, and Jack would gee up the horse and they would continue along the road to Faithwell, where he would drop her off and never give her a lift again, and never smile at her except in a neighborly way. She would be stranded at Adam and Abigail’s house. They had married the week before, yet she felt just as awkward living with them.

Honor had always assumed she would have a deep familiarity and connection with her husband, born of a shared history and community. But then, that did not guarantee success either; Samuel’s abandonment had been as sudden as Jack’s courting of her was now. And the deep familiarity she had relied on turned out to be hollow when not accompanied by physical attraction. At least she felt lust for Jack. That was something.

“Yes,” she answered at last. “The corn is ready.”

Jack jumped down and held out his hand. As he led her into the corn, shaking and rattling the stalks above their heads, the long fibrous leaves pressed in, snagging Honor’s sleeves and gently and insistently scratching at her cheeks. Though they were walking in a straight line along a row, she became disoriented, with the rustling green all around and the hot dark sky buzzing, and swallows flying fast above them, looking for their roost for the night.

Jack laid her down on the sandy dirt between two rows of corn. He looked at her for a moment with a small smile, as if searching for the certainty in her face before he continued. He did not kiss her immediately, but pulled the white scarf from her neck and ran his mouth along her collarbone, gently biting the ridge. Honor sucked in a gasp. No man had ever touched her there-or anywhere, really. Her stalled courtship with Samuel had involved hand-holding and brief kisses, and occasionally she had leaned against his arm when they sat side by side. The touch of Jack’s mouth stirred a part of her she had not known was waiting to be moved.

All around them crickets were blaring their endless song. Honor’s breath quickened when he loosened her dress from her shoulders, pushing it down so that the white arrow of her neckline crumpled like a ribbon at her waist. As he followed down with his lips, Honor closed her eyes and allowed herself to enjoy the pressure of his mouth on her breasts. When he pulled up her skirt and stroked her inner thighs, though, she realized she was picturing Donovan, his speckled brown eyes pulling at hers, his tan hands assured on her white skin. She opened her eyes, but it was too late to stop what they had begun. Jack touched her between her legs, opened her and pushed himself inside. Shocking, and painful, and animal, yet she responded almost unconsciously to the rhythm he set, which she somehow recognized though she had never experienced it before. Faster and faster, stroke after stroke, Honor could not hold on to what she felt, the pain and excitement mixed up so that she lost track of herself in the pounding rhythm. Then Jack thrust and held himself rigid with a gasp. When he collapsed over her, Honor wrapped her arms tight around him, her nose buried in his neck while their breathing slowed together. Turning her face to one side to gulp air, she heard the crickets again, and felt the hard ground against her back. A rock bit into her waist. She gazed, unfocused, at the dark rows of corn, wondering if there were snakes nearby; nothing was moving but it was only a matter of time before one appeared, pulling its weight through the stalks, its gold and brown pattern flashing.

The next day the banns were read. Before they left for Meeting, Honor came upon Abigail vomiting in the backyard. When she straightened, she had the same sweaty upper lip and look of elated nausea that Honor had seen in other women, and she knew at once that Abigail was carrying a child-she who had just married. Honor said nothing when Abigail announced she was going back to bed. Everything is happening so fast, she thought. Too fast.

As they walked toward the Meeting House, she told Adam of her decision to marry Jack Haymaker. Adam simply nodded, without offering reassuring words or expressing pleasure.

Jack would have told his mother before Meeting as well, for as an Elder, Judith Haymaker would have to know of the banns. Honor was relieved not to have been with Jack to witness her first reaction. She was a sober, principled woman, from the brief exposure Honor had had of her at the frolic, at Meeting, and when she bought milk and cheese at the farm. Judith would have had a clear idea about the course her son’s life should take, and it was unlikely that her vision had included a rope merchant’s daughter untutored in dairy farming, small and quiet, and homesick.

Haymaker mother and daughter were already seated: Dorcas in the women’s section; Judith on the Elders’ bench. As Honor sat down, Judith Haymaker was gazing at the whitewashed wall opposite, her arched eyebrows giving her face its usual bright, hard openness. Dorcas was frowning. At least Jack smiled at her from the men’s section. For once Honor missed having Abigail at her side-she felt exposed to the community and would have liked more solidarity than Adam could provide from across the room.

She lowered her eyes and sat absolutely still, as if by not moving she could absent herself from the room. She could not concentrate, however. When Meeting settled into a deeper searching, Honor could not follow the silence down and still her troubled thoughts. Instead she felt her back aching, her nose itching, the heat of the day sending sweat trickling down between her breasts. By the time Meeting ended two hours later, she was more agitated than she had been when she sat down.

The reading of the banns was met by surprised murmurs. Honor turned red, and flinched when she heard a stifled sob from Caroline, Dorcas’s friend who had stared at her at the frolic. Honor knew little of her except that she was a farmer’s daughter. In such a small place as Faithwell, an eligible man like Jack Haymaker was likely to have had a potential wife already earmarked, by the community as well as his family. Now Caroline would either hastily marry another-likely a man from a nearby Quaker community such as Greenwich, twenty miles away-or she would go west with cousins, to Iowa or Wisconsin or Missouri. Honor closed her eyes, unable to bear seeing the defeated face. I am sorry, she thought, hoping that somehow this message would cross the room and settle like a balm on Caroline. I am sorry, but marriage is the only way I can make a place for myself here. Otherwise I am afloat, with no idea how to find land again.

As they rose from their benches, Caroline hurried from the room. Dorcas started after her, but stopped when Judith Haymaker placed a hand on her arm. Honor felt all eyes in the room on her and her future mother-in-law as Judith stepped over to join her, Dorcas trailing behind. Her hands folded so that she would not wring them, Honor faced her future family, as she knew she must-she could not live with her eyes permanently fixed to the ground.

Judith wore a dark gray dress and a flat white bonnet firmly tied with white ribbon. Despite the heat, she did not sweat. Like Dorcas, her shoulders were not sloped as was the fashion of the day, but were almost as square as a man’s, her arms bulging with muscles developed from a lifetime of milking cows. Her mouth was in its perpetual half-smile that Honor now understood held little warmth. “Thee and Adam must come over after dinner,” she said. “We have much to discuss.”

Honor nodded, noting that Judith had avoided inviting them for a meal. It was just as well, for she did not think she could swallow in the older woman’s presence.

It seemed what Judith Haymaker most wanted to discuss was quilts.

Honor had been to the Haymaker farm several times with Abigail to buy milk, and to the frolic a couple of weeks before. But she had not inspected it then with an eye to living there. As she and Adam walked along the track from Faithwell west toward the farm, each step took her farther from the cleared village and closer to wilderness. As they approached the farm, she looked at it anew. It was very different from Dorset farms, which, being older, had sunk into their natural surroundings, while Ohio farms had been boldly hacked out and stood perched on the surface of the landscape. The buildings were laid out carefully rather than higgledy-piggledy, and made of wood rather than stone, the boundaries lined with rail fences rather than stone walls, the whole of it surrounded by thick woods rather than manageable green meadows and hills and small clumps of trees. The two-story clapboard house was set back from the road, and the front yard had some lawn-an unusual feature here, as it required clearing every stump, diligent watering and a dog good at keeping away the rabbits and deer. They had one: Digger, a clever English shepherd who ran at them now, snarling and barking as he had never done when Honor came for milk. He seemed to sense that this visit had a different, more ambivalent purpose. Behind the house were various outbuildings, dominated by an enormous barn, much bigger than the house, painted red but now faded, and with a steeply sloping roof and a bank of earth built up to its entrance. The doors were open, and Honor could see hay in bales piled almost to the rafters.

The Haymakers waited for them on the front porch. Judith Haymaker held a Bible in her lap, Dorcas a shirt she was mending, and Jack sat with his eyes closed-though he jumped up to call off the dog. While Dorcas went inside, Judith ushered them to straight-back chairs before reseating herself in a rocking chair Honor suspected no one was to use but her-the first of many Haymaker rules she was going to have to learn. Digger sat near her, just out of reach of the chair’s runners. He was clearly Judith’s dog; Honor knew he would never come and lie at her feet. Perhaps she would have more luck with the calico cat slinking across the lawn and disappearing into the flower beds laid out on either side of the porch steps. It looked much wilder than her English cat.

Adam and Jack talked briefly about the oats and when the crop would be harvested, about business at Adam’s store, about a new slave law Congress was debating that Caleb Wilson the blacksmith had spoken of at Meeting. Honor wanted to listen but she was too nervous to pay much attention. She had brought with her some patchwork, and got out the brown and green hexagons she had already been working on. As she began to whipstitch them together into a rosette, the familiar gesture calmed her. Wherever she was, however foreign and awkward the place and the people, sewing at least felt familiar.

Judith glanced at Honor’s quick, even work. “Such intricate patchwork will take some time,” she remarked. “Does thee never do appliqué? It goes much faster. Even pieced blocks in patterns like Shoo Fly or Flying Geese or Ohio Star would be quicker than what thee is making.”

“In England we have always made patchwork like this.”

“Thee is not in England any longer.”

Honor bowed her head.

When Dorcas brought out a pitcher of water and glasses, Judith stopped rocking and the men broke off their conversation. “I would like to know what Honor brings to this marriage,” she announced as her daughter began to pour out the water.

There was a silence apart from Dorcas clinking the pitcher against a glass.

“She brings very little, Judith,” Adam replied. “Thee knows her circumstances. Honor has never presented herself to be more than she is.”

“I know that. But does she bring anything at all? Quilts, for example.” Judith turned to Honor. “How many comforts does thee have ready?”

“One.”

“One?” Judith was aghast. “I had been led to believe thee is an expert quilter. I saw thy stitching at the frolic. Look how fast thee works now.” She leaned across and took up Honor’s hexagons. “Thee has the best hand in Faithwell. What has thee been doing back in England?” Behind that question Honor could hear other unvoiced ones: How did a rope merchant’s daughter spend her time? Was she lazy? How would she be useful to the Haymakers?

“I did have more quilts,” Honor explained, “but I gave them away, as they would be too unwieldy for the journey. Grace and I only brought two with us, and Grace’s marriage quilt had to be burned, as there was worry it could be infected with yellow fever.” She looked down, ashamed that she had no quilts to be married with. Marriage had not been her expectation, at least not so soon, and she was unprepared. She should count herself lucky that Jack wanted her anyway.

“Did thy sister not bring more quilts with her for her marriage to Adam?”

“She was not concerned about the quilts, and thought she could make them once she got here.”

Judith grunted and handed back her patchwork. “Thee must ask for thy quilts back from England. Write and explain the circumstances, ask that the comforts be sent. It will take several months, but at least thee will have them. How many can thee get back?”

Honor hesitated-it seemed rude to ask for quilts she had willingly given away. She tried to think of who would be least offended. “Three, perhaps.”

“I do not know what the traditions are in England,” Judith said, “but here young women should have a dozen quilts ready for marriage, and a thirteenth made, a whole-cloth one in white. Perhaps Abigail and Adam did not tell thee, as theirs is a second marriage, where the tradition is different. Now, if thee can provide the white material,” she directed at Adam, “we will hold a frolic later this week to quilt it. We are busy now with crops, but we will simply have to make the time. And we will give thee three of Dorcas’s comforts-with the quilts sent from England that will make eight.”

Dorcas clattered the pitcher onto the table with a stifled cry, red dots coloring her cheeks.

“Of course I will provide the material,” Adam agreed. “I thank thee for accepting Honor into thy family. If the quilts are a problem, perhaps there is no need to rush into the marriage. Honor can remain with us while she makes the quilts she needs.” He did not sound confident in this suggestion, however.

“That would take far too long, if the quality is to be good,” Judith Haymaker replied. “To make five good quilts-”

“Eight!” Dorcas interrupted. “Three to replace mine.”

“Eight quilts, she would need two years, with us helping.”

Adam looked startled, clearly unaware of the work involved in quilting. Though he dealt in cloth, he had not grown up around sisters making quilts.

“Though if she would make appliqué rather than patchwork, it would go faster.” Judith gestured at Honor’s diamonds. “It is time to put those away and take up Ohio patterns.”

Honor stopped sewing and laid her hands in her lap. It was not a great hardship to set aside the hexagons, and she could make appliqué quilts if needed. But she had always assumed that when the time came to make her marriage quilt, she would have plenty of time to design it and oversee the quilting, even if as the bride she was not meant to work on it herself. She would have chosen one or two hands to do it, and had them quilt carefully. At the frolic Judith would organize, however, many hands would quilt it, with varying degrees of skill. At least a patchwork design hid bad stitching; on a whole-cloth quilt of one color the stitching was everything, and the unevenness of the different hands helping would show. She and Jack would begin their married life under a quilt of dubious quality. It was not an auspicious start.

I must not cry, she thought. I will not cry. To keep the tears from spilling over, she gazed out into the front yard for distraction. Then she noticed a tiny form hovering around the morning glory that twined up the porch columns. Honor blinked. It was a minute bird, almost a bee but with a needle beak, moving its wings so fast she couldn’t see them. As she watched, it inserted its beak to draw out the flower’s nectar.

Jack followed her gaze. “That is a hummingbird,” he said. “Has thee ever seen one, or is it another thing England does not have, like lightning bugs?”

Honor shook her head, the movement sending the bird away, though it soon returned. “I have never seen one.”

“We have brought in two crops of hay,” Judith continued, frowning at the interruption, “and we will get in one more this summer. The oats are ready, and then the corn, and there is all the kitchen garden to put up. We are not expecting Honor to work in the fields, but she can cook and look after the garden and milk the cows and sell cheese. It is always a difficult time of year, with just three of us. With four we can manage more easily. If Honor is to be of any help to us, she and Jack must marry as soon as possible.” She shook her head. “But eight quilts for a wedding. I’ve never heard the likes.”

Honor noted that Jack said nothing about the quilts, but allowed his mother to negotiate; perhaps he felt he had already played his part in the cornfield. However, when his mother had finished, he took them around the farm, eager to show off what the Haymakers had built up. It was then that Honor truly began to understand how much her life was about to change. At Abigail and Adam’s at least there were other houses within sight, and the general store-basic as it was-was nearby. The Haymakers’ was only a quarter-mile beyond Faithwell, but the road had turned into a rutted track by then and the farm felt remote. And though it had been cleared so that there were front and back yards, a kitchen garden, an orchard and a pasture for the cows, there was still a sense that the wilderness was close at hand, pushing in on the farm from all sides, particularly the woods to the west where she and Belle had stopped before. Honor had always thought she loved trees, but now the beech woods her brothers had climbed in, the apple orchard behind their house, the horse chestnuts they collected conkers from each autumn, all seemed tame next to the bur oaks and black ash and beeches and maples that made up the woods by the farm. “Wieland Woods,” Jack called it. “Named for my father.” When Honor looked questioningly at him, he added, “He died in North Carolina. Fire.”

She did not ask for details: Jack’s face had shut down.

Almost as worrying as the press of the trees were the animals. The Brights had kept eight chickens for eggs, and bought everything else they needed from the town butcher and dairy. The Haymakers had eighty chickens: twenty layers and sixty pullets for eating. There were two horses, two oxen they shared with another farm, eight cows (“We are adding a cow a year,” Jack explained proudly), and four pigs, huge and so smelly her stomach turned. Indeed, the whole farm smelled of raw animal; she could not imagine living with such a pervasive odor. But Jack had Honor and Adam inspect every animal. As they went around, Adam was polite and seemed genuinely interested, while Honor felt only a growing dread. She could never be proud of a cow. In Bridport she had lived far from barns, and close to the shops that did the selling. Here she would be at the heart of the making. It was a very different life, full of alien smells and sounds and textures and spaces. Seeing Jack in his home made him more of a stranger; she would have to grow used to him too.

The only place on the farm where she felt any ease was in the haymow. There the hay’s sweet, dry, dusty scent masked the stench of piss and manure, and it was quiet, with the animals in the stalls below and the people going about their work. Here she could imagine coming to escape the rest of the farm for a few minutes. New bales from the recent harvest were stacked high. Only the straw in one corner was low. “When we are harvesting the oats, we will replenish the straw,” Jack reassured Honor and Adam. Honor picked up a strand-dull and dead compared to the hay, its life cut off when the seeds were threshed from it.

The house was a little more familiar, since Honor had now been in enough American houses to expect square rooms with large windows, plain furniture made of ash and pine and elm, and oval rag rugs laid on the floor. Judith led them through each room, including the pantry and the cooler cheese-making room off the kitchen. Honor was surprised when she then led them upstairs and showed them each bedroom, plainly furnished but for the red and green and white quilts on each bed. Honor was not expecting to see bedrooms-at home she would never have showed strangers the bedrooms, which she considered private. She glanced at Adam, but he did not raise his eyebrows. In Pennsylvania the families she stayed with had also showed her each room, as if to give her a clear idea of how they lived and what they possessed. In England it would be considered showing off, but here such things were natural and important. Besides, the bedrooms were no longer private to her, she reminded herself, for she was joining the family. Somehow she would have to think of this house as home.

Faithwell, Ohio

8th Month 4th 1850

My dear family,

I am writing to tell you that I am to be married this morning, to Jack Haymaker. We will live with his mother and sister on their dairy farm just outside of Faithwell.

This is very sudden, I know, but I hope you will give us your blessing and think fondly of us.

Please if thee could, Mother, ask for the Star of Bethlehem quilt back from Biddy and send it, along with those I gave to William and Aunt Rachel. I need them here. I am sorry to have to ask, but it is required of me by my husband’s family to have in possession a sufficient number of quilts when married. I hope thee and the others will understand.

Your loving daughter,

Honor Bright