months after Ransom started work, the judge had offered him the room over the single stable at the rear of their lot. It was clean, dry, and secure. With a wash basin, a rope bed, and a lamp, Ransom began to understand what it meant to have more than shelter, to have a home. While Lucy, as her father called her, never entered his room and he only rarely had entered their home again, she had begun to take small chores to the back porch, sitting in a rocker, shelling peas, sewing, sometimes reading, when he came to the steps on Saturday afternoons for his pay.
The first time, after he and the judge had settled their business, as Ransom had nodded to her, turned to go, she had spoken. “Mr. Clark?” He had turned, looked directly at her. “Ma’am?” He was in no way bold, but he was direct. For an instant she had found herself at a loss, though she had set her mind at a question. She looked down, then back at his hazel eyes, his slightly raised brows. He stood straight, arms at his sides. He didn’t fidget. He stood immobile, waiting. “Do you read?”
The job with Judge French had been reason enough to stay, Lucy had become the reason to strive. He had come to sense that she was a doorway to a world he had not known existed, a doorway though which even he might pass. Finally she became the reason that he must go.
It had begun with her reading aloud a piece or two from the newspaper while he sat, transfixed, on the step. The reading led to talk, the talk to more reading. An hour here, an hour there. She had not only attended the common school but had completed the course of instruction at the Livingston County High School. She read newspapers, she had even read her father’s law books. She had learned to read and speak in the French language, a liquid, sensual sound. He asked her to read in the French and gradually he had picked up a word here and there, alphabet, numbers. She and her father talked, she said. Really talked. He told her of cases that had come before him, told her of the accused and the accuser, the reasons. She fairly glowed with knowledge. Within a year Ransom came to the steps whenever he was free and she was there, following her words like a plant follows the sun. She loaned him books. She opened his eyes. She lifted his heart. He had lived for nineteen years imagining that, except for his mother, he was alone against the world; it cared nothing for him and he sought nothing from it except survival. The cares and concerns of others were nothing to him, only survival. He had once seen in his path a butterfly, unsuccessful in shedding its cocoon, wings glued together, dragging itself along the ground, crippled, doomed, but driven to live. Now, with Lucy, his wings were coming free.
The hours with her were gold, the rest were lead. He had come to believe she was an angel, a miracle. She had laughed. “Oh no, Mr. Clark. I am not a miracle, or if I am, then everyone is a miracle.” She was no longer laughing. “I believe that every woman, and man, and child, is a miracle. Whoever we are, wherever we live, whatever our race or nation, we are each unique.” She drew a breath. “No one of us has ever lived before. We will never live again. Thousands of people over thousands of years had to have met just when they did, had children just when they did, for you, for me, to be here. Do you understand?” She paused, leaning slightly toward him, holding her small hands together in her lap, her eyes locked on his, her face straining with the urgency of her message.
She straightened, took a breath, sat back in the chair. “I think sometimes of each of us as actors on a stage. We are each part of a vast story that we don’t understand. We don’t know how or why the story began, or how it will end. The goal in living is to try to understand. But we have no script. We have only a little time. Sometimes our audience calls out suggestions. We can take them, or we can simply say and do what we believe to be the best to carry the story forward. Then our time is up, our part of the story ends.” Again she paused, her face tilted down, her eyes looking up, her lips smiling, shy. “These years are our time, Mr. Clark. We must do the best we can.”
They had sat on the porch at the end of many days, an hour taken before they parted, she into the house, he into his loft. For a few weeks in the winters of his youth between the end of harvest and the start of planting he had gone to the common school, had learned to read, to write a fair hand, to calculate, but more from the desire to escape Benjamin’s heavy hand than through a love of learning. Lucy had encouraged him, had loaned him spellers, histories, books she had used in high school. Now, by candlelight he would read, study, sometimes practice his handwriting. He had heard her some evenings playing the piano, singing. He had wondered if she knew that he listened, staring into the night, filled with ideas he could not understand, longing to be near her.
She had talked to him of books and music, poetry, of the great falls near Buffalo, of the canal building from Buffalo all the way to Albany, of the railroad, nearly a thousand miles of track for trains that could speed at thirty miles per hour, of the wonders of the world, of the wonders that would be. She had talked of places, peoples, of the Irish newly come to the area, of Indians, the Seneca, a powerful tribe of the Iroquois who had lived thereabouts for a hundred years and more, subdued by General John Sullivan fifty years gone, now rarely seen. “This is really their land,” she said, opening her arms. “Their people, others like them, have been here, all across the continent, for a thousand years, maybe more.” A sadness came to her eyes. “Every white person, every black person in America is a foreigner. Our parents or grandparents took the Indians’ land. We’re still taking it.” Her voice was soft, hushed, almost as though she were talking to herself. She seemed not bitter, not pitying of the Indian, not condemning of the whites, simply explaining her belief of conditions of the world in which she lived.
He had hardly known what to make of it. Benjamin had always spoken of the Irish, Germans, all white people who were not native to the area, as foreigners, people to be ridiculed, not to be trusted. As for Negroes and Indians, Ransom had never known anyone to speak of them as fully human, as creatures with thoughts and dreams, capable of kindness or caring, of love and hope. Why, they didn’t wear decent clothes or live in houses. Their skins were not white. They were not Christians. He had never thought of taking land from Indians as different from taking land from deer or bear. Indians just lived on the land, they didn’t own it. He had always thought of land as being for white people. But if Lucy believed these things, he had better think about it.
In late spring of 1833 he had seen a poster in town, a call for volunteers to join the army, go to Florida, protect the settlers from the Seminole Indians. He had stared at the poster for a long time, wondering about the army, travel, Indians, fighting. Lucy had talked to him of travel, the wonders to be seen, but he had never really thought of leaving Livingston County, his work, Lucy. He had learned through Lucy that the United States extended a thousand miles west and twelve hundred miles south, that what was referred to as “the west” began not far from Griegsville, that the American people represented a great diversity of cultures and economies, from barbarism to refinement. The white population had grown from four million to fifteen million. Suddenly a door to the world seemed to open, a chance for him to try a life that promised more than farming and horses.
The law had just been changed, a fellow could enlist now for three years instead of five. He could join up, travel, save money, come back his own man, not the judge’s hired hand. Maybe one day he might build a house. He could cut the trees, rive the boards. There was plenty of stone. A porch, a fireplace. Then, perhaps, Lucy . . .
He had put a shirt, a pair of socks, his knife, in a small worn carpet-bag Lucy had given him. It would be a fifty-mile walk north to Rochester. He had stood on her back porch, knocked. The judge had come alone. Ransom could hardly hear the judge’s words for the disappointment ringing in his ears. Something about returning after his enlistment, taking up the work again. The judge had shaken his hand, gripped Ransom’s right shoulder with his left hand. “The army is a school, Ransom, a hard one. You can learn a great deal, some of it good. You’ll travel, see things. Do your best. Come back, boy. You’ll have work with me as long as I live.” Ransom nodded, felt his eyes burn. Then the judge had turned, gone inside. Ransom turned, took a step.
“Mr. Clark?” It was Lucy. She had taken the place of her father, her back pressed to the door, one hand behind holding the knob. She stood looking into his eyes,
