The Last Runaway

Dandelions

TWO WEEKS AFTER her arrival, Adam Cox asked Honor to help him at his Oberlin store on a Sixth Day, as Abigail, who usually helped him when needed, was unwell. Sixth Days were busy ones in towns, with the stores in Oberlin remaining open late for farmers coming in from the fields. Honor was pleased with the prospect of going to a larger town, for she was finding the isolation of Faithwell trying. She was also glad to have time away from Abigail, who had become increasingly hostile.

Adam normally rode his horse to the store, or walked if he had the time. For Honor, however, he borrowed a buggy. Just as they drove past the general store, Judith Haymaker came out carrying a sack of flour. Honor hoped her eyesight was not keen enough to spot the gray and yellow bonnet she was wearing. She had not touched Belle Mills’s gift since arriving in Faithwell, but thought that it might be appropriate while working in Adam’s store-smarter than her everyday bonnet but not ostentatious. Of course it should not matter what she wore, as long as it was clean and modest. She should not care. But Honor did care about that inner rim of pale yellow, its reflection lifting her face from the gray of the rest of the bonnet, just as she cared about the inch of white cloth edging the necklines of her dresses. Such details made her feel clearer and more defined. She suspected, though, that Judith Haymaker would not approve. Adam himself had raised his eyebrows when Honor came down wearing the bonnet, but said nothing.

Now he nodded at his neighbor, and Judith Haymaker nodded back, otherwise standing motionless to watch them pass.

East of Faithwell the trees closed in, and Honor swallowed several times to force down a rising panic. She wondered if she would ever grow used to the monotonous Ohio woods. It made her miss the ocean-not traveling on it, but the shoreline, with its definitive break from the land and its open, promising horizon.

Once they had turned onto the road north to Oberlin, however, she could relax a little, for it was clearer, running past farms and fields of corn, and the pressure of the woods receded. There was enough sunlight along the road that wildflowers could grow, chicory and Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans. There was also more traffic: other buggies and wagons and horses heading their way, or passing them in the opposite direction toward Wellington.

“Why do all the roads run north and south or east and west?” Honor asked. She had been puzzling over this regularity since first riding with Thomas from Hudson to Wellington. In England roads followed the contours of the landscape, which did not conform to rigid compass directions.

Adam chuckled. “Because they can. This part of Ohio is very flat, so there is nothing the roads need go around to avoid. Except for one dogleg by the Black River a few miles south of here, this road runs dead straight between Oberlin and Wellington for nine miles. The towns are more or less evenly spaced too, every five miles or so in either direction, like a net.”

“Except Faithwell.”

“No, we stand apart,” Adam agreed.

“Why did they place the towns so evenly?”

“Perhaps the surveyors of this territory were trying to bring order to a land they felt they had no control over.” Adam paused. “It is very different from Dorset.” It was the first time she had heard him compare Ohio to home since coming to live with him.

Adam drove Honor around Oberlin before stopping at the shop. It was a pretty town, more substantial than Faithwell and twice the size of Wellington. The buildings looked sturdier and more permanent, with a few even built of brick. In the center of town, four streets formed the sides of a square, which had been created by felling all the trees. Half the square had college buildings on it; the rest was a park planted in diagonal lines with new oaks and elms. Honor was glad to see trees that were familiar and ordered, so different from the thick, indistinguishable woods surrounding Faithwell.

Two of the streets making up the square were taken up by other college buildings. Honor sat in the buggy and watched the young people hurrying back and forth, so busy and earnest. Some were women, and some were black. “Are they all students?”

Adam nodded. “Oberlin was founded on principles of equality similar to Friends. Indeed, it began as a religious community, with strict rules of conduct. No alcohol is sold in town, or tobacco.”

“No spitting, then.”

“Yes, no spitting.” Adam chuckled. “It is surprising, isn’t it? Funny, though, one gets used to it. I don’t notice the spitting now when I go to Cleveland.”

Oberlin’s shops were for the most part on Main Street, and the variety after Faithwell dazzled Honor, with several groceries, two butchers, a cobbler, a barber, a dentist, a milliner, two bookstores and even a daguerreotype artist. The roads were better than the one running through Faithwell-wider and less rutted, though still prone to thick mud when it rained. Planks had been laid in front of the shops for pedestrians.

Cox’s Dry Goods on Main Street was modest compared to the shop Adam’s brothers had run in Bridport, where there had been bolts of cloth stacked in open cupboards from floor to ceiling and a ladder on runners they slid along to climb for out-of-reach material. Here the floor space was bigger but there was less stock, laid out on tables in the center of the room. Adam’s brother had not managed to make the shop into a thriving business before he fell ill. In the year since, Adam had built it up only slowly. It was perhaps the very principled nature of the town that drew Quakers like Matthew and Adam to run a shop there, but those principles were also the cause of the limits to its success. Apart from restrictions on diet and behavior, original Oberlin settlers were discouraged from wearing clothes made from expensive fabrics. Although the town population was now diluted by newer, less principled settlers, there were still few buyers for the more profitable soft velvets and bright satins the Cox family had sold to non-Quakers in Bridport. In fact, there was little Adam sold that Honor could not have worn herself. Full of gingham and chintz-which American customers called calico-and only a little damask or dimity for curtains, the shop’s brightest fabrics were the bundles of offcuts Adam kept in stock for quilters. There were no restrictions on what an Oberlinite or a Quaker could use in making her quilts, even if the bright reds and greens of Ohio quilts might never be seen in her dresses.

Adam kept Honor at his side for the first hour to teach her how to measure cloth against the marks made on the edge of the table, make a small cut and rip the fabric along the weave, and wrap it in brown paper and string. She had bought cloth often enough to be familiar with the procedure, which did not differ between Oberlin and Bridport. At least some things were the same in the two countries. Once Adam was confident that Honor knew what to do, he left her to deal with customers alone while he handled money and oversaw a boy he’d hired to sharpen scissors and needles brought in by customers, a recent initiative he hoped would help the shop’s prospects.

Honor was glad to have contact with new people. While living in a community of Friends was familiar, after just a few weeks in Faithwell, among the same people day after day, she was finding its limitations trying, and craved variety. At home she had been more used to the mingling of Quakers and non-Quakers, and with the coming and going of ships there was always something different to see, and strange faces to ponder. In Adam’s store she studied people’s clothes and listened to their talk about politics or the weather or crops, or what foolish Oberlin students had been up to. She watched boys run by with hoops, and smiled at a girl dragging a carved toy dog on a string. She held a baby while a customer spread out a bolt of cloth, and helped an elderly woman around the corner to the buggy waiting for her on College Street. All of these interactions made her feel vital rather than the unwanted extra she was at Abigail’s.

Among the steady stream of customers, several black women came in to buy cloth or needles or pins, or to have their scissors sharpened. Honor tried not to stare, but she could not help it, as they were like exotic birds blown off course to land among sparrows. They all looked the same to her, with brown skin like polished oak, high cheekbones, wide noses and dark, serious eyes. They conducted themselves similarly too. After glancing at her, they went over to Adam, waiting for him if he was helping someone else, then asking him for material, or giving him the scissors or needles for the boy to sharpen. It was as if they had established that Adam was safe, and so they did not have to approach her. Clear about what they wanted, they chose quickly, paid and left, saying little to Adam and nothing to Honor. They certainly would not have asked her to hold their babies for them.

When there was a lull in the shop, Honor went out for a brief walk to escape the heat inside, and discovered a few doors down a confectioner’s where a crowd of black women were gathered, chatting and laughing in groups. The man behind the counter, selling peppermints and shaved ice, was also black and clearly in charge. Honor had not expected Negroes to own their own businesses. Donovan had been right: Oberlin was radical.

As a Quaker, Honor had been used to the feeling of being set apart, and she was an outsider in almost every place in America. She knew the black women must feel more comfortable with one another, just as she did with other Quakers. However open-minded, people tended to gravitate to those like themselves. And Negroes had reason to be wary of whites, where one family could produce two people as different as Donovan and Belle Mills. But as she watched the women so clearly at ease, where they hadn’t been in Cox’s Dry Goods, she felt a pang. I am excluded even from the excluded, she thought.

Late in the day, as she was folding cloth, Honor heard a throat cleared beside her. “Excuse me, miss. How much is that a yard?”

A black woman stood next to her, intent on the fabric in Honor’s hands: a cream cotton dotted with tiny rust-colored diamonds. She was as small as Honor, and older, her cheeks smooth and shiny and crisscrossed with lines, like the palms of hands. She wore spectacles and a straw hat trimmed with dandelions limp from the heat.

Honor glanced toward Adam: he had disappeared into the back room. “I will look for thee,” she said, pleased to have been asked. Each bolt was wound around a flat piece of wood; on one end Adam had written the price. Honor searched for that now, pulling back the layers of cloth. “Fifty cents a yard,” she announced.

The woman grimaced. “I can manage that, just about.” She pulled out a lace collar yellow with age but beautifully made, and laid it on top of the cloth, smoothing it with long fingers tipped with pale oval nails. “This go with it?” She said this more as a statement than a question, and Honor did not know if she should answer. The collar went well enough with the material, but something finer like silk would have been preferable. She did not think she should suggest this, though, as silk cost much more.

“Is it for thee?” she asked.

The woman shook her head. “Daughter’s wedding dress. She need somethin’ she can wear after, for everyday or for church.”

She is like any woman, Honor thought, concerned that her daughter should look her best and yet have a practical dress. “Then it is a good choice,” she said. “How many yards would thee like?”

“Six-no, five, please. She’s a little thing.”

Her hands shaking, Honor measured and cut the cloth with more care than she had for any other customer that day. As she wrapped the cloth and tied twine around the paper, she thought, This is the first time I have helped a black person.

She felt eyes on her and glanced up. The woman was studying the yellow rim of Honor’s bonnet. “Where you get that bonnet? Not from Oberlin, did you?”

“No. Belle Mills’s Millinery in Wellington.” Several other women had already asked about the bonnet and had been disappointed that they would have to go all the way to Wellington for one.

Recognition sparked in the woman’s eyes; she gazed at Honor, a steady look unhampered by her glasses. She might have been about to say something when Adam appeared from the back room. “Hello, Mrs. Reed. Has Honor been able to help with everything thee needs?”

Mrs. Reed’s eyes disappeared behind a flash of spectacles as she turned to Adam. “Yep, she did. Where Abigail at?”

“I’m afraid she was unwell this morning.”

“Was she, now.” Mrs. Reed pressed her lips together and handed Adam the money for the fabric. She made it seem as if she had much to say but was holding it back behind her clamped mouth, only letting some of her thoughts seep out from her eyes. She picked up her package from the table. “Thankee. Good day.” She turned and departed without looking back.

Honor refolded the cloth and put it away, deflated. Clearly their encounter had meant much less to Mrs. Reed than it had to her.

Faithwell, Ohio

7th Month 5th 1850

My dear parents,

I was overjoyed to receive your letter this morning-the first I have had since the letter that awaited my arrival in Faithwell. As I read it I could hear your familiar voices, and imagine exactly how Mother sat at the desk in the corner to write it, looking out of the window now and then while considering what news to tell me.

My pleasure was only tempered by the pain of reading your address to Grace as well. Even as I write this, you, indeed the whole community, still do not know of her death, and it is an odd feeling, that news of such importance suffers a delay of almost two months. By the time you receive this letter, other things may have happened that you will not know of. Similarly, the news I have had from your letter may already have been overtaken by other events. I can only hope and pray that our lives will not be so full of drama as to outdate our letters before they reach their destination.

Since last writing, I have been slowly getting to know the other residents of Faithwell, and to help Abigail more effectively than I did at first. I am no longer trying to reorganise the house, for when I do make a suggestion she takes it as a criticism against her. Of course I don’t mean it in that way-I am only trying to help her establish a household that runs smoothly. But she is very sensitive. Adam has refused to become involved other than to ask me to respect Abigail’s right as mistress of the house to organise it as she prefers. And so I have had to step back.

However, in one way I have managed to make real improvements. Abigail does not like to work in the kitchen garden-it is unbearably hot, with the sun shining more than in England and the air so thick and still. One might think that since she is a native to American summers she would be more tolerant of the heat than I. But she becomes very red in the face and complains so bitterly that I pity her. Then there is the constant struggle against animals and insects, which she finds trying. When I offered to do the work myself, Abigail looked grateful for the first time since my arrival. That in itself is worth the heat.

In the garden we are growing many of the vegetables one would find in thy garden, Mother: potatoes, beans, carrots, lettuces, tomatoes. But they are different from what I am used to, even when the varieties are meant to be the same. The potatoes are larger, with more eyes. The carrots are thinner and more tapered-though as tasty. The beans have a smoother skin, and the lettuce leaves grow much faster.

Much of the garden is given over to corn. Where at home it is only grown to feed livestock, here corn seems to be the primary staple, even more than wheat or oats. It grows everywhere, and though it is still too young to eat fresh, I am assured it is tender and sweet. I have, however, eaten much that is made with cornmeal. Too much, I sometimes think. Abigail insists on doing the cooking, though she will allow me to wash and chop and scrub for her. Everything seems to be corn-based, from the mush favoured for breakfast to the bread that accompanies dinner to the batter for the occasional fried fish to the cakes we have with coffee. Of course I do not complain; I am grateful for any food served. It is just that the underlying sweet vegetable flavour begins to make everything taste similar.

I have much to do in the garden. Abigail and Adam started it off well enough, but in the summer heat it needs constant watering. The weeds seem to grow faster and more luxuriant than the crops. Then there are the deer and rabbits, the birds, the slugs and snails and locusts and other insects I am unfamiliar with. The rabbits are particularly clever at digging under fencing-I am sure American rabbits are more intelligent than English ones-to the point where I am almost tempted to sleep out in the vegetable patch to scare them away. Now that Abigail has handed over the responsibility for the garden to me, she has become very critical of my methods, without making useful suggestions herself. It can be rather trying. Luckily the corn does not need too much attention. I am glad, for whenever I go down the rows of it I always scare out a few snakes. I have never seen so many snakes; I have had to stifle a few screams. Most of them are harmless, though there are enough that are poisonous to keep me wary.

They say here that the corn should be ‘knee-high by the Fourth of July’. Ours is much higher than my knee, and I thought it must be doing exceptionally well, until I was told that it meant one’s knee when mounted on a horse. There are so many words and phrases that I don’t understand, sometimes I wonder if American English isn’t a language as foreign as French.

Yesterday was the Fourth of July. One subject Americans feel strongly about is their independence from Britain. They are very proud of having become a separate country. I did not know what to expect, though I had heard there would be celebrations in many places. However, neither Faithwell nor Oberlin celebrated, for it would be supporting the Declaration of Independence, a document that I have learned does not include Negroes as equal citizens. Instead some of the Faithwell Friends went along to the college park in Oberlin to listen to anti-slavery speeches, bringing with us a picnic deemed necessary rather than celebratory. In general northern Ohioans oppose slavery, and Oberlin has a reputation for being the most vehemently anti-slavery of all the towns in the area.

For once it was not too hot, with a breeze that kept us comfortable. The spread of food was enormous, all laid out on trestle tables. Americans take their picnics very seriously. Where at home we would carry modest provisions, here it is considered important to display and eat as much as possible. I did not think that Faithwell Friends would find a way to show off-indeed, in terms of dress and deportment they are as modest as any Bridport Friend. But they laid out more food than ever we could eat, with much care taken over the baked goods. This seemed to be the case with Oberlinites as well, as I noted when Abigail and I strolled about the square. I have never seen so many pies.

I was interested to witness a small group of Negroes also picnicking. While my passage in America to Ohio took me only through states where slavery is not permitted, I did come across a few Negroes, usually working on the docks or the stagecoaches, or in the kitchens and stables of inns. I never saw any at their leisure. Here I studied them-out of the corner of my eye, for I did not wish to stare-and found they are not so different from everyone else. Their picnic was certainly as abundant, though it may have differed in content: many Ohio Negroes are originally from the South, where I have heard the cooking described as more vigorous. The Negro women dressed with more frills than a Quaker would, though the cloth was not so fine. The men wore dark suits and straw hats. Their children were boisterous, and played with balls and pinwheels and kites, as did the white children in the square-though they did not play together.

The speeches were long, and I confess I did not understand much of what they said. It was not just the American accents, which are varying and at times baffling. It seems that even those opposed to slavery disagree about how it should be ended, with some advocating immediate emancipation, while others argue that such a drastic action would ruin the economy, and that freedom needs to be handed out incrementally. They talked too of Congress-the American equivalent of our Parliament, I think-debating a bill about fugitive slaves, and the men who spoke grew very heated, at times their words descending into personal insults towards politicians I had not heard of. However, their speeches gave me much to think about.

Then the blacksmith from Faithwell recited a poem in a deep simple voice that was welcomed by the crowd. I asked afterwards and discovered it was a poem by Whittier: ‘Stanzas for the Times’. I have written down some of the lines I want to remember:

… guided by our country’s laws,

For truth, and right, and suffering man,

Be ours to strive in Freedom’s cause,

As Christians may,-as freemen can!

When it grew dark the students of the college hung paper lanterns in the trees, and fiddlers played songs I was not familiar with. It was very beautiful, and I felt at ease for perhaps the first time since leaving England.

Only one thing marred the day. I was at the picnic table, looking for food with no corn in it, when I overheard Judith Haymaker, a dairywoman who sells us milk and cheese and is one of the Elders of Faithwell Meeting, say to Adam, ‘A man living with two young women who are neither sister nor wife nor daughter is an arrangement that cannot continue.’ I did not hear Adam’s response, but he looked very grave.

I would like to report that I was astonished by her words, but I was not. She has voiced the thought that has nagged at me ever since I arrived in Faithwell. Neither Adam nor Abigail has spoken of it, but there is a tension at times that I know stems from our unusual household. However, please do not be troubled on my account. You may take comfort in the knowledge that by the time you read this letter, we will have found a suitable arrangement to satisfy everyone.

Your loving daughter,

Honor Bright