Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation Read Online Free PDF

see that she was still a bondwoman, and that Pa hadn’t married her out of wanting someone to take Ma’s place, but because he needed a woman to work out at the cabin.
    At the river, Pa set me down on the other side and then went back for the bondwoman; and I could understand that, him not wanting her to spoil her dress when she had only three calicoes. We didn’t go very fast, because the bondwoman had to rest every now and then.
    We had smoky for noontime meal, and Pa let the bondwoman cook it. Pa and I ate first, but he didn’t stint on how much smoky she ate; Pa wasn’t the kind to stint on food. But a few slices were enough to satisfy her. While Pa was smoking his pipe, I took a good look at her, for the first time, really. She wasn’t bad looking; not comely and big and strong, but white-faced, though not so bad looking. I saw that her eyes were blue and light; something I hadn’t noticed before, since most of the time she kept her eyes cast down.
    After Pa had smoked a while and figured it was time to start again, he rubbed his mustache and cleared his throat.
    â€œRachel,” he said, “my boy here, Davey, he’s ten years old and growing like ragweed. I guess you’ll cotton to him.” Then he knocked out his pipe and said, “You ain’t much of a walker?”
    â€œNo,” Rachel answered.
    â€œDon’t talk much either.”
    â€œNo.” She never looked at him.
    â€œWell, I’d just as soon let you ride, only it ain’t fitting a bondwoman should ride and her master walks, even if she is wedded wife to him. Also, it ain’t fitting a woman in calico should ride astraddle.”
    â€œI think I understand,” she whispered.
    Pa nodded and rose; he mounted his horse, and Rachel picked up her bundle and followed him.
    That night, Rachel made her bed aside from us. Pa looked at her strangely and then said, “You’ll be cold, away off from the fire.”
    â€œI’ll be all right,” she said.
    â€œGood and tired, I reckon,” Pa remarked.
    â€œNo, I’m not tired,” she answered slowly. “A bondwoman can’t know how it is to be tired.”
    Pa shot a deer on the way home; he told Rachel she could start it salting and smoking the next day. The first thing he did when we reached the clearing was to point out Ma’s grave.
    â€œA good woman,” he told Rachel.
    â€œNot like you,” I muttered.
    It was fine, clear weather, the end of that May and into June. Pa said that if things held out that way, settlers would be flocking in thicker than bees. Pa cleared two more acres.
    Rachel kept the house; one thing about her I couldn’t deny, she kept things neat and spick-and-span. She made bread every other day, and she cooked growing things, like parsnip and redtop. And I’d see her washing out one of her calico dresses each day; evenings, she’d sit with her needle and mend.
    But it wasn’t enough for Pa, and I made sure it wasn’t enough for me either. Pa was always finding fault with one thing and another; the meat wasn’t smoked right or the cow wasn’t milked right; the food wasn’t cooked right. Not like Ma had done it; he kept reminding her about that, day after day, week after week. He wouldn’t let her forget her place as a bondwoman. But that was before the hunter came.
    Rachel was supposed to school me for an hour each morning. Even if she was a bondwoman, she had plenty of schooling, reading and writing and sums and subtraction, and history and even geography. That was another thing I held against her; Lord, I hated that schooling.
    Well, one morning I heard her calling me. I came slow and easy, for all her calling, “Davey, Davey, where are you?”
    â€œWhat is it, Rachel?” I asked her.
    â€œLearning, Davey.”
    â€œWell, damn it, why don’t you leave me alone?”
    â€œPlease don’t swear, Davey,” she said.
    I