Wilderness Run Read Online Free PDF

had all the time in the world back then. Time wasn’t a commodity the way it is now,” Daniel said.
    â€œYou’re always mooning about the past, Daniel,” George said dismissively. “You don’t even like horses. You’ve been afraid of them your whole life.”
    Daniel sighed at his empty plate. “‘Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye?’” he intoned, hiding his left hand in his pocket. A silence fell at this bitter recitation. Bel felt ashamed for him, and, for the first time, a little defiant. Her father would never dare to help a runaway slave, she realized. He would just talk about it. The realization set her firmly on Laurence’s side.
    â€œYour father,” said Faustina, breaking the silence, “would say precisely the same thing as Daniel. Horses, unlike machines, have a motion familiar to our own—”
    â€œFamiliar enough to make my rump ache,” George grumbled.
    Faustina tossed up her hands and refused to continue. The last bit of meat Bel swallowed was still sticking in her throat. The runaway must be so hungry by now. Out on the ice, she’d had a bread crust in her pocket to feed the few winter birds. Why hadn’t she remembered to give it to him?
    â€œGeorge, please don’t use that kind of language at the table,” said Pattie. “Girls what were you telling me about Thomas Van Sicklin and the youngest Pomeroy daughter?”
    Lucia and Anne, sensing discord once again, turned the conversation back to a gossipy river of reflections about the various young couples in Allenton. Bel watched as the windows around the table went indigo. Greenwood lay beneath a darkness deeper than the sea, and somewhere a man was freezing, waiting for them to rescue him. Mary brought out dessert, a flaky strudel made from the apples Grete kept in the root cellar beneath the house.
    Letting the hum of voices wash over her, Bel examined her father’s creased forehead, the way his eyes flicked to his wife now and then as if to measure something in Faustina. Always quiet and bookish, he rarely seemed passionate about anything but his own designs for the new train station, or a reservoir, or a canal that would branch down beside the lake. With his good right hand, he sketched for his family his dreams that one day Allenton would have a pavilion along the waterfront, where the lumberyards and warehouses now bustled, dirty and loud. A park where ladies could walk, and a few restaurants that served tea and sandwiches along the shore—this he imagined for his wife and daughter; this was his version of happiness.
    About the approaching war, Daniel said little, refusing to believe in it. How could brother fight against brother? was his refrain. Above all, we are brothers, under the same laws, the same flag . To this, his wife would give an indulgent, if strained, smile and change the subject. Because Bel loved her father fiercely, she had tried to agree with him, and grew angry with her mother’s cynicism. How do you know? she would begin when they were sitting together in the afternoon, Faustina teaching Bel how to stitch. Maybe the people in Virginia are saying the same thing as Papa . Faustina, in the midst of her embroidery, would pause, needle raised. Your father has never been much of a prophet, because he is no good at predicting human ugliness. He does not believe in it . And the needle would pierce the fabric again with a small tearing sound.
    Her uncle stretched back from the table to smoke, offering a cigar first to his brother. Daniel refused with a frown. Soon, a bittersweet cloud ensconced George from his daughters, who continued with their own dimly pleasant talk. Laurence, thin and restive, swiped the crumbs back and forth across his plate, not even faking an interest in the conversation.
    Just when Bel was about to invent some reason to get her mother alone, she felt the table shake. Her father stood