After walking quietly out past the woodpile to the privy, he returned to place a sawed section of log on the chopping block. He had not chopped since he left Whitley County six months ago, and he was surprised at how easily the axe split through the wood. So impressed was he with his newfound strength that he quickly had stove wood for several meals and was well on his way to exhausting the supply of cut log sections when Rebecca called from the back stoop, “Stop that chopping. You done woke both them up and they’s coming down too soon. I told you to chop quiet.” Speed didn’t make the reply he wanted to. He wanted to say that there wasn’t any way to chop wood quietly. He wanted to say maybe she could say thank-you for all the wood. But he repressed his urge to inform her of his feelings and took quiet pride in his morning’s production. Somehow Aunt Ruth’s scripture came to mind, “He shall smite the earth.” He wondered if chopping wood could qualify as “smiting.”
There followed times in the autumn of 1835 when Speed wished he and his mother were back in Whitley County, or better yet, in the close communion floating down the Cumberland with Simmons and yes, even with Sid. As it was, he saw little enough of his mother. When his mother and Pastor Spencer called on Mayor Roundscape, the three of them reached an arrangement that foreclosed further talk of Platte Purchase. In return for providing domestic assistance to Mrs. Roundscape and her five children, ranging in age from two months to ten years, the Mayor would provide Joycie and Speed with appropriate room and board. “Appropriate room” proved to be a nearby legacy log cabin of ten feet by sixteen feet divided into two sections by a wooden partition. The trapper who had built it some twenty-five years before had chinked the spaces between the logs with clay, some of which had contracted, allowing drafts to enter. Two tiny windows in the front wall, covered with oiled paper, provided dim illumination. Joycie took the smaller room to the left and let Speed have the larger one to the right because it had the stove. She said she was used to the cold.
“Appropriate board” was a share of food, not to be taken with the family at the dinner table but ladled out by a skinny, squeaky-voiced Negro cook named Lucie. Joycie did not feel she could subject her son to meals with a kitchen slave. She said, “Now that you’re getting your growth you got to be careful who you’re with. ‘Birds of a feather must flock together,’” so they retreated to the little cabin to take their meals sitting on Speed’s rope-slatted bed, using their well-traveled wooden box as a dinner table.
Speed, on the recommendation of Pastor Spencer, was accepted at the local academy as a charity case and placed in the seventh grade. The teacher acknowledged that he probably belonged in a higher grade, but as it happened there were no local children who continued beyond the sixth grade and the academy had purchased no mathematical text, or for that matter had no books of geography, history, or philosophy.
The oldest Roundscape child, a girl named Matilda, was the other advanced student. She rarely deigned to speak to Speed, instead bestowing the favor of her attention on the younger girls. Speed felt her slight keenly. He was obsessed with her blooming figure under the fitted bodices of the dresses her mother bought. Whenever they were in proximity, he did his best to hide the furtive glances he gave her body and her permanently pouting lips. There were boys of his age in town, but they seemed suspicious of a newcomer from Kentucky, especially one without a father whose mother had some sort of household role for the Mayor. For a glorious week in mid-November he was hired by Norbert Muench, the German livery owner, to feed and water the horses and clean the stables. He enjoyed the incessant banter with the men who worked there, the introduction to the important men of the town when they came as customers, and most of all the companionship of a boy his own age, Floyd Little, with whom he felt an instantaneous comradeship. Then his mother made him quit when Parson Spencer reminded her that the Germans were Catholics and associating with Catholics was not proper for a good Christian.
The incident prompted words between mother and son while they were sitting at the makeshift table after dinner one evening. “You don’t care about me at all, Ma. You never want me to have any fun, to go out and meet people,” he said, putting his hands between his thighs, not daring to look her in the face. For the first time in several months he felt the annoying pain in his leg where the snake bit. “All you care about is pleasing some old preacher.”
Joycie paused a long time before answering. “I guess I was wrong, Speed. We ain’t there yet, Speed. We ain’t to Platte Purchase. I can see that now. Things will be better when we get there. But now we got to do the best we can here. Spencer’s been mighty good to us for the time being.” Joycie didn’t offer any further explanation, and Speed could see from her silence that she had no alternative but to please Reverend Spencer. After a time, Speed wanted to tell her that it was okay, that he didn’t miss his new friends at the livery stable, but he really did miss Floyd, so his words of filial absolution remained unspoken.
As gray December began and the temperature under often-cloudy skies sank to the low thirties, Speed noticed Joycie’s visage sink as well. Often Madame Roundhouse, as both mother and son had named her in their private conversation, dismissed Joycie to their little cabin mid-afternoon while the baby slept. Speed might find her napping in her bed or, eyes open, staring silently at the ceiling. It was not the first time Speed had observed his mother in what Aunt Ruth had called “one of her moods.” He had seen the vacant stare back in Whitley County and even observed it on rare occasions over the summer on the flatboat. Somehow the flatboat had been a tonic for the moods. But now, especially in the ever-advancing evening darkness as the late autumn wind swept through the mud chinks between the cabin logs, the moods seemed to come more frequently and last longer.
One chilly afternoon after school, rather than endure her prolonged silence, Speed walked over to the parsonage, took up the axe, and began to split wood. After a few minutes Pastor Spencer came through the back door, pushed his glasses to his forehead, and called out, “Good for you, Speed. Good for you. Your efforts shall not go unrewarded. Come in the kitchen when you are done. Rebecca will have coffee.” Speed smiled at the man and continued to split the wood “thunk—thunk—crack—thunk—crack––thunk—crack.” The initial double thunk split the log section the first time, then each subsequent division usually required only two strokes. As the late afternoon was darkening, he stacked the split wood and took an armload into Rebecca’s kitchen.
“Evening Rebecca. Where’s this wood go?”
As she pointed to a wood box in the corner she asked, “You that boy come with your mammy back in October?”
“Yes,” he said before he clattered the wood in the box.
“Parson Spencer say give you coffee. Brush your shirt off and wash your hands. I tell him you here.”
“Thank you,” Speed said as he stepped back out the kitchen door to brush the woodchips from his shirt and pants and rinse his hands in the nearly freezing basin of water next to the door. When he sat down at the kitchen table, the Negro woman set a cream-colored crockery mug in front of him. Speed could not resist his curiosity about the relationship of the parson and the woman.
“Rebecca,” Speed asked, “Does Reverend Spencer own you?”
The woman inhaled, making her considerable presence even more imposing. Her voice was full of fervor as she replied, “I as free as you, free since Parson Spencer paid my bond.” She reached in her bosom and pulled out an envelope worn thin in places. “This here paper proves it.” She held the envelope up to Speed’s face, “but I don’t show it to just anybody. It’s too precious.” She replaced the paper from where it had come. The boy was taken aback by the woman’s overbearing response. As he swirled the coffee around in his mug, he wondered why she was so worked up. He thought of the harsh words Sid had said about Negroes, how they recognized they were little better than monkeys and meant to work. Then there was his mother’s insistence that he was better than Lucie. So why had Parson