Free Impatient With Desire by Gabrielle Burton Page A

boots…
     
    “Again!” Eliza shrieked. “Hold on tight,” George said, and grinning at me, he took giant steps around Elizabeth’s kitchen in his gleaming new boots, Eliza on one foot, Georgia on the other, squealing in delight.
     
    I looked up from the scarred and grooved boot in my hand. George was propped up on his platform, Georgia and Eliza lying listlessly under a blanket next to him. “Your turn for the lesson, George,” I said.
    “I was born in North Carolina of…,” George began. His tone was flat, almost rote. His spirits fluctuate as often as mine.
    “Did you know Mother there?” Frances asked.
    A little laugh burst out of me, and it was so unexpected, such a rare sound in the shelter, that it startled us all and completely changed the atmosphere. When George began again, it was in his old voice. Even after all his years of traveling, he has never lost his soft and easy North Carolina accent. “You carry a perfect Southernday in your words,” I told him soon after we met. I didn’t say that more than one woman has been led astray by a man’s voice.
    How curious that I married two men from North Carolina, two men whose voices could charm larks from the trees. Tully and George were alike in other ways too, I was thinking…
    “This is a few years before your mother was on this earth, Frances,” George said. “Now I was saying. I was born in North Carolina of Revolutionary stock—”
    “I’m Revolutionary stock too,” I said. “My father, your grandfather Eustis, enlisted when the Revolutionary War began. He was 15. A sentinel at Old North in Boston, Massachusetts, the same place that gave the warning that the British were coming.”
    “One if by land, two if by sea,” Frances said.
    “You’re Revolutionary stock on both sides, children,” George said. “You can always be proud of that.”
    It’s a fierce pride George and I have always shared. “Americans bow to no master,” I said.
    George nodded and went on. “When I was 18, your uncle Jacob and I went to the land of Daniel Boone. Where is that, Elitha?”
    “Kentucky,” Elitha said.
    “On to Indiana,” George said.
    “Then to Illinois,” Elitha and Leanna said simultaneously with George.
    And after a tiny pause, the three of them said again simultaneously, “To Texas. All of us together.” They smiled at each other. It was almost playful.
    “Back to Illinois again,” George said. “I buried two wives there, including Elitha and Leanna’s mother, Mary Blue.”
    Elitha spoke next and with some importance. “Our mother, Mary Blue, and her sister, Elizabeth Blue, married Father and Uncle Jacob. Two sisters married two brothers.”
    “Aunt Elizabeth is our double aunt, and Uncle Jacob was our double uncle,” Leanna said.
    “Why doesn’t Aunt Elizabeth ever come here?” Frances asked.
    “What were you thinking?” I wrenched my mind away from Elizabeth’s words back to the boots and Leanna’s voice. “She’s busy with our double cousins,” Leanna said.
    “If any of you ever decide to go back to Illinois,” George said, “you have family there who will help you. You have your half brother, George. You have your five half sisters…”
    Springfield, Illinois, 1839
    George, 53, and I, 38, strolled a bit ahead of Elitha, 6, and Leanna, 5, dragging sticks in the dirt road behind us. George gestured to them.
    “Except for Elitha and Leanna,” he said, “my son and other five daughters are all on their own—”
    I looked up at him in astonishment. “You have eight children?”
    With a twinkle he said, “So far.”
    “I understand you’ve recently returned from Texas, Mr. Donner,” I said. “You didn’t find it to your liking?”
    “We put in one crop,” George said. “My brother and sister-in-law didn’t like Texas from the start.” He lowered his voice. “Leanna was only 3 when her mother died, and she has a special closeness to my sister-in-law, Elizabeth. By myself I would have stayed and helped