Free The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier Page A

chairs, a sideboard for crockery and pots, a larder—called a pantry here—for storage. Yet the feeling is entirely different from the East Street kitchen. Partly it is that Abigail is not so well organised as thee, Mother. She does not seem to have “a place for everything, and everything in its place,” as thee taught me. She stacks wood haphazardly so that it does not dry out, leaves the broom blocking the slops bucket rather than out of the way in the corner, doesn’t wipe up crumbs and so attracts mice, leaves dishes in a jumble on the sideboard rather than neatly stacked. Then too, the range and fireplace take wood instead of coal, so the kitchen smells of wood smoke rather than the deeper earthiness of burning coal. We don’t have to clean up coal dust, but the wood ash can be just as trying, especially when Abigail is clumsy.
It is unfortunate that Abigail and I did not get off to a good start. The first meal she served on my arrival was a steak pie: the meat was tough and the pastry hard. I said nothing, of course, and chewed away at it as best I could, but Abigail was embarrassed—and was made more so by giving me sour milk the next morning. I am hoping to be helpful to her, using gentle persuasion over time.
I have ventured out into town a little—though ‘town’ is perhaps an ambitious word for a row of buildings along a rutted track. Bridport must be a hundred times its size. There is a general store—what we would call a chandler—a smithy, the Meeting House, and ten houses, with farms in the surrounding fields. The community comprises some fifteen families, most of whom moved from North Carolina to get away from the slavery that is engrained in society there. I have not yet been to Meeting here, but the people I have met are friendly, though absorbed in their own concerns, as many Americans I have met seem to be. They do not practise the art of conversation in quite the way the English do, but are straightforward to the point of bluntness. Perhaps this will change when I have got to know the community better.
Beyond us the road extends into forest, except where farms have been hacked out of the trees. I had no idea before coming to America just how hard it is to create farmland out of woods. There are stumps everywhere. England is very ordered, with the feeling that God has put trees in their place, and meadows in theirs, and that the fields have always been there rather than needing to be created. I look at the woods here from the window of my little room and it feels as if they are creeping towards the town, and axes will only temporarily keep them back. You know I have always loved trees, but here they are so overwhelmingly abundant that they feel threatening rather than welcoming.
The general store is sparsely stocked with everyday items. For everything that the general store doesn’t carry, we must go to Oberlin, three miles away. It is much larger, with a population of two thousand as well as a collegiate institute full of students. I have not yet visited, though Adam’s shop is there and he goes most days. Eventually if Faithwell grows large enough he would like to move the shop and sell primarily to Friends, but that may take some time. He has said I can help at the shop when they are busy. I shall be glad to be useful.
Daily life here feels more precarious than it did at home. What Bridport did not have Dorchester or Weymouth was sure to. In the American towns I have visited on my way here, and especially now in Faithwell, I sense that we must be self-sufficient, that we cannot rely on others because they are not always there to be depended upon. Most here grow their own vegetables, as we did, but there is no one selling lettuces should one’s own be eaten by rabbits, as Abigail’s were—here one simply goes without. Many keep their own cow as well. Abigail and Adam do not have a cow, though they do keep chickens; we buy milk and cheese from one of the outlying farms.
I have painted