“A pleasure.” She handed me something warm wrapped in cloth. “My county-prizewinning pie.”
Carrot-red clay caked her feet, her heels cracked light brown with use. She’d walked barefoot all the way here, for companionship. With a pie scenting of vanilla and buttermilk—a kindness, a generous gift. She introduced her daughters, Sophia and Poppy, then started in about the sewing circle and literary society. She told of the sharpshooting contest and taffy pull organized for this Saturday and the ball game the following week. “Oh, we’ll have such fun. You must come round on Sundays for supper.” Olive untied her bonnet’s white ribbons, her fingers long and deft as they loosened the knot. “What gatherings are you most excited about?”
“I’ll attend barn raisings. Help when obliged,” I said. “But I’ve no interest in socializing.”
Olive’s hands faltered as she reknotted her bow.
“Ma—” Her daughter Poppy tugged at her scratchy, wincey-wool collar. From the energy charging about her like a lightning storm, she looked just out of pinafores, perhaps nine or ten, not yet comfortable in tailored blouses. “She hasfourhorses.”
“Four, huh?” Olive straightened her daughter’s braid. “Make sure you stand back a pace. Wouldn’t want to spook ’em.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” I said to Poppy. “Go on, say hello. They’re friendly.”
Olive nodded and Poppy dashed over to my horses. Olive shared she’d staked claim with her daughters; her husband, Asa; and a teenage son, Thaddaeus. Asa and Thad were back on their quarter section digging their dugout into the slope of a hill. There was much to do—I didn’t have time for chitchat. I peeked at my trenches.Sophia pressed her knees in the dirt, several rows down, planting my potatoes—she’d practically finished for me.
“Good Lord,” I said. “She mustn’t do my work.”
“Sure enough, your tilling’s lovely,” Olive rubbed her hand over her mouth, “but there’s nothing wrong with being neighborly.”
I transferred my weight to my spade. Was she teasing me? “You saying something about my planting, Olive?”
Her eyebrow popped up. She was radiant, her honey eyes crackling. Amused, I drummed my fingers on the wooden handle, then strode over to Sophia and thanked her. “You don’t need to plant for me.”
Sophia glanced up, her lilac bonnet perched atop black ringlets. “Oh, I just adore planting potatoes,” she said. Sophia was perhaps sixteen, her ethereal demeanor startling with its similarity to Magnolia’s. “Gardening is so full of hope, don’t you suppose?”
I wiped at my nose. “It’s practically transcendent.”
Olive snorted. She thanked her daughter for being thoughtful, then walked with me to the patch of shade cast by my tent. Olive considered my camp, black fabric snapping in the wind. “It’s just you?”
“Come hell or high water.” I leaned my spade against a wooden crate and offered Olive a basket of pawpaws I’d foraged.
“I admire that,” Olive said, grabbing a fruit. “The gumption to build such a life, on your own.”
Poppy squealed—Whistlejacket’s velvety nose nibbled her hand. I nodded toward Poppy. “I remember days like that.”
“That one, she’s a hot pan of live fire.” She watched Poppy with affection, wiping dirt from the pawpaw, the yellow rind blotched with brown. “All nature, she’s bursting right outta her skin, and sometimes I cannot find my patience.”
“I caused my ma an appalling amount of suffering, scurrying about as I did.”
“Well, I suppose.” Olive studied me. “You must have breakneck grit to venture alone.”
I saluted with my pawpaw, took a bite. It tasted overwhelmingly sweet.
“Gawd, but she needs the structure of schooling.” Olive tapped her thumb on the pawpaw, gently bruising the velvety skin. Beyond, Sophia carried another load of potatoes in her apron. Olive shared that there was no school until the following autumn, that it’d take time to bring a teacher down, but that they’d make do, as they always did.
“You’ve primers for her?”
“No. No books,” Olive said. Poppy stroked Cricket’s mane, kept up a stream of chatter. “I hear there’ll be a book wagon, sometime.”
I’d packed only essential supplies, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of traveling without stories. I’d placed favorite chapbooks and literary monthlies into my trunk, along with Dickens and Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and Sir Walter Scott. What else would there be to do during the long, dark winter evenings? A thought crowded my mind, of theIvanhoehardback shoved deep into a crate. The emerald-green cover with the smoky black vines, the book a haunting reminder of bloodshed.
“I’ve no primers,” I said. “But I’ve some dime novels that might be helpful.”
“In truth?” Olive brushed her fingers round her ear, looked through an opening in my tent with longing.
I dug some chapbooks from a chest and handed them to Olive. She held the books with reverence, aligning the askew covers. “We couldn’t.”
“Take ’em,” I said. “Borrow more anytime you like. Just send the girls on over.”
