guests for dinner. I do hope they can stay the night.” He intended to both extend an invitation and alert his servant that she would have extended duties. A light-skinned Negro woman a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than the man emerged from the kitchen wiping her hands on a floral apron that protected a plain gray dress.
“They can eat and they can stay if that’s what you say. You make the rules.” Her broad face was matter of fact. To Joycie she said, “You and the boy can wash up behind the kitchen and got to take what we having. I can’t do nothing special at this hour of the day.” Speed could feel her resentment but could not identify the cause. Was it that they were invited last minute? Perhaps she felt they were taking advantage of the pastor. He was quiet and let the adults do the talking.
“No, no, of course not,” said Rev. Spencer. The portions of the dinner of chicken, gravy, potatoes, and green beans were somewhat meager since what had been intended for one in the dining room and one in the kitchen was shared among three and one, but the pastor cut the freshly baked apple pie in sixths rather than the customary eighths so that Speed could have two large slices. After dinner they adjourned to the parlor where Rebecca served Joycie and the pastor coffee next to a fire, which cheered a room chilly in the mid-October evening. Speed took a cane-bottomed rocking chair but held it still after Joycie mouthed “No” toward him and made a downward motion with her hands. Though he tried, he could not fight off the sleep that overcame him. They were in western Missouri at last, they were fed, they were warm, and his mother seemed at ease. As he drifted in and out of sleep, he heard phrases like, “Liberty has advantages over Platte Purchase lands…,” “…perhaps a situation with Mayor Roundscape,” “…the ladies will certainly welcome,” and “schooling may even be possible.” And then there was another feeling that he couldn’t quite identify, the feeling that he was in the presence of two adults who had known each other well at some time in the past. They smiled and chuckled often as their conversation continued. Had his mother known this man more than she had said? He had some of the same feeling he got when he found his mother with Buford Crawford months before.
When he awoke to the sounds of a flock of sparrows outside in the October sunshine and the snores of his mother beside him, he vaguely remembered stumbling upstairs to bed the previous night. He pulled on his shoes, then descended the stairs quietly to find Rebecca blowing on the coals in the stove. The woman didn’t look up but sensed his presence. “You do your necessaries and then split me some wood, quiet as you can. Don’t want them woke before they have to. Quick now. Make yourself useful.” Speed didn’t like taking orders from a Negro slave, but he could see this was her territory. There weren’t many Negroes in Whitley County because most of the white farmers were too poor to afford them, but those that were there, like Buford Crawford’s slave Boston, kept quiet anytime Speed was in their presence.
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
