each drawn together like a cap over a central head at the end of a stem. He was tempted sometimes to try the wild mushrooms but remembered a childhood friend who tried one after seeing a squirrel eat the same type, only to develop cramps and vomiting fifteen hours later, just before he died. Turned out it was the deadly Amanita. Ransom learned to identify the salad plants and herbs that grew wild in the woods, to enjoy the clean, bitter tang of dandelion, not only the yellow flowers but leaves and hollow stems as well.
For a while, working sunup to sundown left no hours when he could safely visit Ma and the children. Sometimes, on a Saturday, he’d hang around the tavern in Greigsville, wait for old Benjamin, then get out to the farm for a few minutes. He’d take a dollar or two for Ma when he could, trinkets, candy for Jacob, Sally, Katherine, and Carolyn.
Farmers, seeing how he worked, began to hire him whenever he showed up, liking his size, his strength, his sober ways. Ransom Clark, they found, was all business. He rarely smiled, except with children. He said little. He worked. He knew farming, he knew plants, animals, could get an ox to draw when even the owner couldn’t make him move. Fields that hadn’t raised a weed began to bring forth hay, potatoes, corn.
With the deep-furrow horse-drawn moldboard plow he would turn and cross-turn a field to start the hills three or four feet apart for corn, drop and cover the seeds. He’d plant all day, backbreaking work, the next day haul water in two big wooden buckets for the seedlings, doling it out like he was nursing a baby. And they grew. Tall and strong, like Ransom.
Farmers, finding that he was sleeping in the fields, began letting him use their hay lofts, sometimes eat at table with them and their families. He had never known that a home could be like this. “Please” and “thank you” were not terms he was accustomed to. He tried to remember the manners Ma had taught him: keep your elbows off the table; eat with a spoon or a fork, not your fingers; don’t spit on the floor; and never drink liquor.
From the time he left home until spring he found employment with one farmer and another. Every farmer’s corn needed cultivation. Spring planting was done. He began the hoeing; first the weeding, then the half-hilling, then the full hilling. In fall he cut the ripened ears off the stalks, stored them in the farmer’s barn. Husking and shelling were fall and winter work and a time for frolics, a time to share and celebrate the end of the harvest. Ransom had no friends, nor enemies for that matter. He took no part in frolics. If he had an entertainment it was throwing his knife.
He had become friendly with a few Seneca Indians that passed through, had seen them more than once bring down a rabbit with a quick but casual throw of a knife. Offering a few ears of corn, a handful of potatoes, through signs he asked them how to do it. And he practiced. On breaks, in the evenings before he slept. A thousand throws were mostly fumbled, smacking into a tree, falling. He would ask a Seneca to throw at a tree, watch him closely, the grip, the throw. Slowly, his began to stick, quivering in the wood. He had the feel, the motion. Now all he needed was practice. The day he made one hundred throws and ninety-eight stuck, he knew he had it. He felt an immense pride. In spite of Benjamin, he was more than a beast of burden—he could learn.
Ten months passed. He was becoming a name among the farmers in the Genesee Valley. He planted, plowed, reaped. What he didn’t know about local farming when he left Benjamin he learned. He had a way with tools, could make or repair anything around the place. He worked, and that was all he did. Except for helping Ma and the children with all the dollars he didn’t need for food, a few clothes, and he didn’t need many. He had no goals except to struggle on. If there was a purpose to living he had no idea what it might be, nor did he spend much time in wonder. All he had learned was how to work, to survive. He did not look around or ahead. As far as he knew there was nothing to look for. And then he met Judge Noah French.
He was working on Aaron Hatfield’s farm, following a horse and plow, when he looked up one day, saw a man facing him at the end of a row. The man stood stolidly, like he had a right to be there, coat open, thumbs hooked in his belt. He looked rumpled, but official. “Mornin’ Ransom. Name’s Wadsworth, Deputy Wadsworth. Judge French asked me to stop, see could you come by. Today’d be all right.”
Neither spoke further, neither felt the need. Judge French wanted to see Clark, Clark would go. Both men knew it, didn’t need to talk about it, explain it. No need to shake hands, no need to talk about the weather. Clark knew Wadsworth from his official visits to the Clark place when there was trouble, which was often. He wasn’t a bully, didn’t make more of his job than it called for, but he did it.
The deputy stared at the younger man, taller, swarthy even if he hadn’t been burnt by exposure all day, every day. Strange boy, big, inches taller than Wadsworth, staring back with unblinking eyes, neither cowed nor challenging. He just stood, hands on the plow, immobile, powerful, like an ox, but his hazel eyes glowed like banked fires. Wadsworth was just as glad the boy didn’t want to put up a fight like some did. Might be a problem, even with a pistol, he thought. Ransom only nodded, made a faint twitch with one rein, turned, continued plowing.
The courthouse at the north end of Main Street in Geneseo had closed, the judge gone home an hour before Ransom put up Hatfield’s horse and plow. He walked the two miles through the gloaming from Hatfield’s past one plowed field after another, the few trees still standing girdled to die and create more field, to the Genesee River, across the bridge and into the village of one hundred buildings, five hundred people. From the courthouse he turned down Main, passing the unfinished Livingston County Bank, the Colt house, Kelsey house, the home of Jacob Hall, the harness maker, the old clapboard house of the Bishop family. Through the windows along the street came the soft glow of candles, here and there the sharper light of a lantern as families gathered in. Four blocks down he passed the village green, turned left on South Street. The grounds surrounding the homestead of the Wadsworths, begun in 1804 by pioneer James Wadsworth, took up the entire block. Across the street, along the north side, was the home of the local merchant William Bond, beyond it at number 17, the oldest house in the village, built in 1808 by Colonel Joseph Lawrence, Geneseo’s first blacksmith. Between Elm and Prospect stood the sturdy, well-kept cobblestone house of Judge Noah French. Ransom had seen him a few times, never met him, though old Benjamin had been before him time and again and couldn’t curse him enough. But the old man cursed everyone, especially his sons.
Ransom went to the rear of the house, stepped up on the porch, knocked. By the time he had taken a deep breath the brown porcelain knob turned, the door opened in. A girl stood with one hand on the knob, the other on the jamb. She was clean and pretty, and had long, dark hair; she wore an apron over a long, patterned dress. Ransom told her his name. She nodded, unsurprised, looked at his soiled but tidy clothes, down at his boots. “Washed ’em,” he said, stamping his feet lightly to dislodge the dust of the road. She looked up, smiled, motioned him in. It was the kitchen. He surveyed it in one glance, looked back at the girl for direction. The room was fine, warm, clean, a cheerful fire on the raised brick hearth, a pot of something good-smelling bubbling in an iron pot on the rod. Fresh washed vegetables were piled on a wooden counter by a granite chopping block. Lanterns glowed. He swallowed, the sound audible. “This way,” she said. Her voice was clear, steady, gentle.
She led him down a long quiet hall, carpet on the floor, pictures on the walls, small brass wall lanterns glowing. He remembered once entering the nave of the Presbyterian church, had never thought of a private home having such peace. The girl walked with her head up, hair drawn loosely back, tied with a dark blue ribbon. Her waist was small, hips barely swelling. A woman. She stopped, turned, tapped on a partially open door to the right, looked down at the floor, her breasts in profile full as melon halves. “Father?”
“Come in, come in.” The girl, smiling again, turned to Ransom, pushed the door with her left hand, motioned him in with her right. He started to smile, started to take a step toward the beckoning room, then paused, suddenly thought of turning back, down the hall, out the kitchen, back to Hatfield’s hay loft. The clean home, the peace, the lovely girl, a man, a
