“You’re busy,” he said. “I don’t mean to hinder you.”
It was a stupid conversation. But both the cook and Willie were in the kitchen, and the mistress would be in and out. How could they say anything that mattered?
“Have you been to home at all?” she asked, turning back to her work and motioning him to sit on a low stool beside her.
“No,” he said. “Nor you, ey?”
She shook her head. She wanted to tell him about the money. How she wanted to get it safely home. Ask him what she should do, but she couldn’t, of course, with others about.
“I saw Luke a few times,” he said. “He’s been up once or twice to look at the farm. The house is fine.” He lowered his voice. “He had a bit of a laugh about the way we blocked the door. He had to climb in the window.”
She didn’t like the idea of Luke or anyone else climbing in the window. It made the cabin seem less secure. A coon or a bear might climb through the window as well, or a tramp. But she didn’t comment.
“Do they work you hard?” she asked softly. He looked so small and thin.
“They’re fair. The miller works as hard as any of us hands. The food is plenty and good.”
Then why aren’t you bigger? she wanted to ask him, but she held her tongue.
After he had gone, she thought of a hundred things she wished she had said. She could have told him about the frogs, if she’d remembered to. He would have laughed, and she longed to hear his laugh. She was much lonelier after he went. His presence for an hour had rubbed off some of her protection, leaving her feeling raw and exposed. He had left about noon, carrying some bread and cheese Triphena had pressed on him for his journey. He was wearing snowshoes that looked nearly as long as he was tall. Suppose it began to snow before he got back safely? Suppose he got lost? She tried to shake off her anxieties. Would someone let her know if something were to happen to him? It would be days, for they would let her mother know first, and then she might or might not write to Lyddie. It was too hard being separated like this. It was not right.
“The weather will hold, ey?” Triphena said, reading her mind. Lyddie sighed deeply. “You’re worse than a little mother,” the woman chided, but her eyes were softer than usual.
The weather did hold for another three days, and then the blizzard of the winter came. The stock was watered and fed, the cows were milked, but there was little that Otis and Enoch, the two hired men, could do outdoors, so the kitchen was crowded with men, seeking the warmth of the great fire as they made spills for the March sugaring, whittling four-inch segments of sumac, which they hollowed out with red-hot pokers. She thought of how she and Charlie had made spills last winter for tapping their own maples. Their own efforts were so childish compared to the practiced skill of these hired men.
She could hardly move in the kitchen, large as it was, without tripping over the gangly legs of a man or having one of them bar her path to the fireplace with a poker. Triphena grumbled continuously under her breath and rejoiced audibly when they left to tend to the livestock.
But Lyddie didn’t mind so much. Their bodies were in the way of everything she had to do, but as they worked they talked, and the talk was a welcome window into the world beyond the tavern.
“They caught another slave up near Ferrisburg.”
“The legislature can say all they want to about not giving up runaways, but as long as them rewards are high, somebody’s going to report them.”
“Well, you gotta decide.” Enoch spat at the fire. His spit sizzled like fat on a hot griddle. “Who’s in charge? Down in Washington slavery is the law of the land. Man buys a horse fair and legal, he sure as hell going after it if it bolts. You pay for something, it’s yours. If the law says a man can own slaves, he’s got a right to go after them if they bolt. Ain’t no difference I can see.”
“And if I happen to return somebody’s property, seems to me I deserve a reward.” Otis paused to pull his poker from the flames and thrust it smoking through the center of the sumac spill he held. “None of them high and mighty folks in Montpelier offered to pay me a hundred dollars not to report a runaway, now have they?”
“Well, this weather they likely to be froze ’fore you find ’em. You reckon the reward holds froze or thawed?”
“Why you suppose anyone’d try to run in winter? Don’t they know how easy it is to track a critter in the snow?”
“Way I figure, it’s not snowing down there where they come from, ey? They don’t know what it’s like up this way. They just see a chance to run, they run. They don’t give it good thought.”
I’d give it good thought, Lyddie said to herself. I’d get it all figured out close and choose my time right. If I was running, I’d pick me a early summer night with a lot of moon. I’d just travel by night, sleep in the day …
“Can you believe these fools?” Triphena was saying in her ear. “They don’t know what it’s like to be trapped.”
Lyddie had never seen a black person. She tried to imagine how one might look and act. In a way, she’d like to see one, but what would she do? What would she say? And supposing it was a fugitive, what then? One hundred dollars! Would they really give you a hundred dollars for turning in a runaway slave? Surely, with that much money, she could pay off her father’s debts and go back home.
* * *
* * *
March came. The sap began to rise in the sugar bush, and Cutler’s was in a frenzy of activity. Willie went with the hired men to help in the gathering and boiling of the sap. Mr. Cutler had built a large sugaring shed two summers ago, and the only time any of the men were around the big house was when the livestock needed tending to. Even then, Lyddie was called on to help with the milking and the feeding and watering of the stock.
Added to all her other chores was the task of clarifying the syrup brought up to the house. They had never bothered much with clarifying at the farm as there had hardly been enough syrup or sugar for the family, but the mistress was very particular and stood over Lyddie directing her.
It was hot and exhausting work—beating milk and ash lye with the syrup and boiling the mixture until the impurities rose to the top in a scum and could be skimmed off—but the mistress, who only watched and commanded, declared the light, clear syrup worth the effort.