hardly grown. How in heaven’s name did your family let you go off like that?”
“We want to keep the land in the family.” Olivia took a step back, eager to end the conversation. “Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mrs.
Stubblefield,” she said in the warmest voice she could muster, forcing her face into a sweet smile. She returned to Miss Meyers and asked for a dozen eggs, a
tin of milk, and a slab of butter. She also selected a simple rag rug from the pile
on the counter and asked for a calendar. She paid quickly and prepared to flee,
before her new neighbor could ask any more questions.
“Please stop by to visit any time.” Olivia gave her hand to Mrs. Stubblefield
again. “It’ll be a lot less lonely knowing we’ve got neighbors, even if you are so
far away. You too, Miss Meyers.” Olivia turned back to the store clerk. “I’d appreciate the company. Gets lonely out there.”
“Don’t I know what you mean,” Miss Meyers said. “Gets just as lonely here
in town. You take care.”
Olivia left the store and climbed up onto the wagon seat, next to her hired man.
“What you be needin’ a rug for?” Mourning asked as she tossed it into the
back.
“To hide the door to the cellar.”
Mourning emitted a loud snort and shook his head. “You been told all the
trappers ’round here been usin’ that cabin for years. Ain’t no one for miles don’t
know that cellar be there.”
“Just drive,” Olivia said, looking straight ahead.
Mrs. Stubblefield emerged from the store as they drove off. Olivia glanced
back in time to catch a glimpse of Iola’s chin hitting the road, when she got a look at Olivia’s hired man.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Over the next month they settled into a routine. With Olivia’s help, Mourning
got a good start on putting a roof on the barn and spent the rest of his time chopping down new growth trees and uprooting stumps.
As Olivia began to feel more at home, she gave names to areas of their
property. “The farm” was the two acres closest to the cabin that Uncle Scruggs
had once cleared and that Mourning intended to plant first. In the center of the
farm, on a small rise, stood a tall old oak tree, whose low branches jutted in all
directions. Olivia called it the climbing tree and asked Mourning not to cut it down. That was where her children were going to build a tree house and hang swings. Behind the cabin were the little woods. The big woods spread out
beyond the farm. In those big woods Olivia discovered a large clearing, which she guessed to be eighty rods wide. She assumed a whirlwind had taken all the
trees down and so called it her windfall. It was there she went to sit on the fallen
logs and write and sketch in her journal.
Not that she had much leisure for that. She spent her days keeping the barrel
full of water, laundering their clothes, baking bread, and stirring a boiling pot over the fire. She also put in her garden, became proficient at splitting the logs
Mourning and she cut, and helped Mourning in the field. He showed her how to
use the scythe to gather the brush around a pile of stumps that needed burning and left her to light and contain the fire.
She had quickly grown used to wearing Mourning’s trousers and shirt. When
he went back to town for their door he returned with two pairs of boy’s trousers
and two flannel shirts for her. He also bought the mirror she’d been wanting – so
she could try sketching her new “Michigan self” – and a pie safe someone had
