Free The Purchase by Linda Spalding Page A

said nothing of pigs. He’d also said nothing of daughters, and this was another subject on which Daniel needed advice. Lately, Mary had seemed distracted. Perhaps it was her age. Perhaps she was missing her schoolmates. Perhaps it was time to put her to serious work teaching Isaac, who needed schooling. Even Benjamin was ready for an alphabet. While he considered this, Daniel allowed the two boys to sit next to him on the riding board, although it was somewhat dangerous. Children had beenknown to fall off. But Isaac and Benjamin were soon bouncing and shouting and helping him hold the reins as Mulberry picked up her pace. Her ears flicked and twitched at the boys’ laughter and at the trees singing on both sides. Trees do sing, Daniel thought, being full of birds at the first signs of spring.
    At sundown, they came to a cabin that stood alone with no fields discernible. Daniel saw girded trees but no clearing.
    “It be the Indian technique,” said the owner of the cabin, whose grey hair hung limp on his shoulders and whose face, under a coonskin cap, looked like something known to the elements. “And the dangdest thing,” he went on. “For as the girdled tree takes its time to die, it sure do loose its leaves so plantin can be done right underneath without the bother of cuttin limbs and choppin trunks and pullin out stumps. It saves a heap a human labour.” Taking Daniel and the boys around to the back of his cabin, he aimed his forefinger at a pen with a sow and ten piglets. “They be ready for any leavins you create,” he said, slapping Daniel on the back and patting Isaac’s thin shoulder. “Yep, they eat up our sins, for sure. Pig be man’s best friend as I make it out. Not dog. Unless you like to eat dog.” He gave a hearty laugh and poked at the sow with his boot.
    Isaac saw that the poke was friendly and he grinned. He had taken a liking to this wild man and his unwild pigs who ate up sin.
    “Watch out! They savour flesh.” The old man laughed again.
    All the coins Daniel had brought were borrowed from Ruth and he intended to pay them back even before he paid his other debts. “Ruth,” he had said, neglecting, for once, to use her full name, “when you were in my employ, there was some payment. Is there any of it left?”
    Ruth had gone to the homespun pouch in which she carried everything she owned. In it there was a comb, a needle, a dishwith a picture of a ship, eight hairpins, and a linen envelope. Her eyes had been bright as she opened the envelope. It held coins in the amount of five precious dollars. It was more than Daniel had expected, but he took all of it.
    Now the two men made a business of quibbling. The old man was no crook, but he took Daniel for a man with no understanding of pig value. Daniel knew that Quakers were sometimes defrauded of their money since they were unable to swear to the fact of theft in court. A Quaker cannot take an oath. Nevertheless, while the boys put hands into the pen and stroked soft, pink, shivery bellies and backs, he paid out the whole of Ruth’s saved-up money, rubbing each coin as he brought it out of the linen envelope and thinking of Rebecca, who would be shaking her head if she could see him in this circumstance. At night he heartily missed the feel of her under the quilts. Those long legs sheathed in cotton. Sleeping in the wagon alone, he wrestled with the thought of it, trying to understand how the source of such comfort could be rotting in a grave, trying not to picture it. For twelve years he had come home to her every day with a sense of accomplishment. Their expenses were few, a bit of rent money on the house and their supplies, and she was always pleased by his efforts. There was no need to save. In a Quaker community, prices were fair; tradesmen were honourable; children were taught to trust everyone. But without community, nothing was easy to understand. Now, when Isaac and Ben climbed back into the wagon, they had four piglets loose