forty-five
Lapeer County, October 1873
Mary looked down the road in either direction. “Are you sure there is nothing to be done?”
“Nothing but wait for Jacob,” George said.
The bay gelding at the wagon tossed his head and stamped a foot.
“Oughtn’t we try to get him out of the sun?” Mary asked. “It’s warm for October and he’s had a heavy load.”
George unhitched the horse and led him toward the woods on the north side of the road. “We’re not far from Pine Creek. Could give him a drink and get him hitched again before Jacob is back.”
“Yes, let’s do that. If you know the way.”
“I know the way.”
The forest was dressed in the fiery hues of autumn, made more brilliant by the sinking sun. The only sounds were of their footsteps upon fallen leaves. They walked due north until Mary could hear trickling water in the distance.
“There’s the creek,” George said. “Just ahead. Though with the dry summer we’ve had it won’t be much.”
“I can’t believe I never realized you didn’t ride.”
“In all of your letters, that never came up.”
Mary wished she hadn’t mentioned the letters. They had been on her mind since she determined several days ago that she was once more with child. Her first instinct had been to tell Nathaniel, but after their last disappointment she held back. Instead, she took the letters out of their hiding place and pored over George’s words to her during the years of their private yearning. The love she had for him blazed forth like a fire that had been long smoldering but not snuffed out.
When they reached the creek, the horse drank of the meager stream of water.
“It’s so cool and beautiful here,” Mary said. “I wish we didn’t have to go back to the dusty road.”
“We don’t have to go right away.” He looped the lead line around a low branch and left the horse nosing around the forest floor.
Mary walked a few steps along the creek and stopped. “We won’t be lost, will we?”
George smiled. “As long as we follow the water we won’t.”
They walked in silence. Mary chose her footing carefully, her smooth-soled, heeled boots being far more suited to carpets and hardwood floors than roots and rocks.
“Do you know I haven’t been out for a walk in the woods since I was a child?” she said. “Though I don’t imagine those trees are there anymore. That part of Detroit is nothing but houses now.” She snagged her foot on a root.
“Watch it, there!” George grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “You okay?”
Mary caught her breath and looked up into George’s face. Twelve years had aged him gently. His once-shadowed eyes were ringed by fine lines, and as they met hers they still held the tenderness she’d seen in them at the kitchen door so many years before.
“I wish you would kiss me,” Mary said, astonished that she had finally voiced her long-silent desire. She had revealed that yearning once before—in the letter that Bridget had mistakenly sent to Nathaniel during the last months of the war.
George hesitated but a moment, then pulled her closer and covered her lips with his own. Then he gently pushed her away. “I can’t do this.”
She stepped toward him. “George, please, I—”
He pulled back and gave her a hard look. “You know this isn’t right. You shouldn’t have allowed me to kiss you at all.”
“I would allow it again.”
She reached for his cheek, but he intercepted her hand and pushed it back toward her. “We shouldn’t have come out here.”
“George, I don’t love him. I’ve tried. I even thought for a while that I succeeded. But I don’t.” She searched his face. “I love you. And I know that you love me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Mary felt a tear trickle down her cheek. “I know he’s been unfaithful.”
George looked away. Had he known? What did the men talk about when there were no women around?
“Please,” she said.
Then George buried his fingers in her hair and laid her down upon the newly fallen leaves. And beneath the veil of the silent trees, a decade of yearning came to an end.
“We been gone too long,” George said without looking at Mary.
She didn’t correct his grammar. How could she correct anything? She had expected to feel utter bliss at the fulfillment of her long-delayed desire, and so the swirling mixture of anxiety and shame in her stomach took her by surprise. What had she done? She buried her face in her hands and tried to steady her breathing. The trees that had hidden them from sight moments before now appeared to be witnesses to her crime. The sun filtering through the leaves was like the burning eye of God, the righteous judge from whom she would not be able to escape.
George led the way back to the horse. Mary conjured up an explanation of their tardiness for Jacob, who would no doubt be waiting for them with the other wagon. By the time they reached the road, the sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving a blush in the west that was swiftly being swallowed up by night.
But there was no Jacob and no extra wagon.
“He should have been back by now,” George said. “Something must have happened.”
George helped Mary onto the gelding’s back and they started off down the road, which grew darker and darker. They had been walking nearly half an hour when the animal beneath her stopped. George clucked his tongue and tugged on the lead, but the horse remained planted.
“What is it?” Mary asked.
George shuffled around in the road, straining to see in the dim light of a crescent moon. Then his foot connected with something. He felt around in the dark. “My Lord!”
Mary slid off the horse and landed hard on the packed dirt road. “What is it?”
“Some poor soul left for dead.”
Mary gasped. Together they pulled the unconscious man off the road and placed him on the horse’s back.
She felt the man’s ears. One whole, the other misshapen. “It’s Jacob.”
“Horse must have thrown him.”
“How far are we from home?”
“Maybe another twenty minutes at this pace.”
“Then we’d better get moving as fast as we can.”
They started up again, each walking on either side of the horse with a hand on Jacob to keep him from falling. It felt like an eternity, but eventually Mary spotted an orange glow ahead.
“Why, they must have every candle and lamp in the entire house burning to guide us home.”
But as they drew closer they smelled smoke.
George dropped the lead and began running. “Barn’s on fire!”
Mary hurried the agitated horse to the house and pulled Jacob onto the ground with a thud. She tied the horse to the porch railing, far enough away that he wouldn’t trample Jacob, and rushed inside. “Mrs. Farnsworth! Mrs. Farnsworth!”
The cellar door burst open and Mrs. Farnsworth appeared, a crying Benjamin in her arms.
Mary reached for her son. “What are you doing down there? The barn is on fire! And Jacob is injured. Come!”
She peeled Benjamin off of her and set him on the steps in the hall. He screamed, his face crimson and streaked with tears.
“Stay right there! Mama will be back in a moment, I promise.”
She rushed out the front door with her cook to drag Jacob into the house. When the feat was accomplished and Jacob lay on the settee, Mrs. Farnsworth ran into the kitchen for rags and water while Mary made a vain attempt to kiss away her son’s tears as he screeched directly into her ear. She rocked him back and forth. Slowly, his high-pitched wails were replaced by a low and insistent whine.
Mary held Benjamin’s small red face in her hands. “Benny, Mama must go help with the barn, do you understand? I am going to leave you here with Mrs. Farnsworth and I will be back soon, okay?”
Benjamin immediately resumed full volume. The look of betrayal in his eyes was more than Mary thought she could bear. Suddenly, Little George and Jonathan tumbled into the room.
“George! Where is your father?”
“They’re all out back at the well with the pails. We saw the fire from the south field.”
She stood to leave. Jonathan dropped to the floor alongside his apoplectic younger brother and hugged him.
George hesitated. “Mother,” he said, “I didn’t know this was going to happen.”
“Of course you didn’t, George.”
“They never said anything about the barn,” he said as he choked back the first tears Mary had seen in his eyes in two years.
She gripped his shoulders. “What did you say?”
“They said they were just going to send them a message.”
“Who? Who was going to send a message?”
Mrs. Farnsworth burst back into the front hall. “Boys, give me a hand!”
Mary heard the shouts of men through the open kitchen door. Her eyes lingered a moment on her eldest son, then she rushed outside. Horses, cows, and pigs screamed. Chickens were running and flapping across the yard. Sweat-slicked men had formed a bucket brigade between the water pump and the barn. Flames climbed into the night sky like the devil’s grasping fingers. Mary looked around for a bucket and instead found the tortured features of a dead man. Sam. She could hardly hear her own screams for the noise.
“Mary!” Nathaniel’s voice cut through the chaos. He caught her up in his arms. Immediately her treachery in the forest rushed back to her. “Where have you been?”
“W-we had some trouble on the road. Jacob’s been hurt. George is—”
“There.” Nathaniel pointed to the line of men with their sloshing and ineffective buckets. “What happened?”
“An axle broke, and Jacob went to get the other wagon and never came back. We went after him and found him unconscious on the side of the road.”
She should have been there. Should have been home. Should have been faithful.
“The boys are all in the house. Oh, Nathaniel, what happened here? What happened to Sam?”
Nathaniel’s face was grave. “He is not the only one. I’ve counted two others—Jim and Theodore—and I don’t see Billy or Peter. This was no accident. Gordon said it was a group of men on horses with guns and torches. They may have caught Jacob along the road on the way here.”
“But who would do such a thing?”
“Someone who wanted to send a message.”
The old threat from Mr. Sharpe mingled in her mind with Little George’s cryptic words and rare tears. They had not been tears of fear like those of her youngest son. They were tears of regret. And when all had settled down and life had somehow returned to normal, if it ever could, she determined that he indeed would regret whatever part he may have played in this night of terror.