Those early weeks now seem a blur to me as, with the warmth of spring turning to the heat of summer, we spent our days engaged in little more than the business of surviving-or, perhaps more accurately, attempting to understand how we were to survive. Andrew cleared land-backbreaking labor which I feared might be the death of him and his horse. Even with all his strength poured into the work, it yet confounded him, as he pulled saplings from the ground and chopped to the stump a near forest of oaks and birches and sycamores. They gave up their earth grudgingly, and Andrew would return from a day’s work covered in dirt, his hands caked with blood. I would gaze out upon the land and be unable to see what his efforts had yielded.
Yield it did, though, and at last enough land was cleared for a small planting. I would spend my mornings tending to corn and vegetables in the hopes that enough would grow for us to have some food in the fall. Many in the West planted Indian style, sowing the seeds upon the earth in a formless scatter and hoping a sufficient number took, but Andrew and I were more methodical, tilling the earth, planting in rows, giving each stalk room to breathe and grow.
The purchase of an old spinning wheel-it required significant repair at Andrew’s clever hands-allowed me to spin flax, and my needle was often busy in repairing our clothing and making new from the cured skins of Andrew’s hunts. Only a few months in the West, and with his beard, hardened muscles, sun-reddened skin, and buckskin clothes, my husband had become a true border man. He would come home at night, exhausted and hungry but content to eat the meager repast I could provide-corn pone from our stock of meal and meat from what animals he had hunted, given what flavor we could by an always diminishing supply of precious salt. Venison was a rare treat, for he had little time to hunt deer, but almost without effort he might kill a turkey or bear or even a rattlesnake, which were ever lurking; no trip to our own gardens could be conducted without vigilance. In some strange compensation, the woods afforded a species of pigeon so insensible to danger that to kill it one need only walk up to one and hit it with a stick.
This was our life. After his dinner, Andrew lay down upon our rough bed while I lit candles (which I learned to make with my own hands from bear fat!). Perhaps I might spin awhile or, if I could steal an hour, pore over my copy of Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce or James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. Even in the wilderness, I still sought inspiration for my novel, now little more than scraps of dead characters walking though their fictional lives like ghosts-empty and evacuated, present but incorporeal. Despite my bone weariness, I knew that this book resided somewhere inside me, wanting only its time of quickening, awaiting the right alchemy of idea and story and setting. The West, or perhaps the scheme by which we had come west, held something for me, but I could not say precisely what. I could not name it, but it was there.
We were often enough called upon by what was there styled neighbors, though the nearest lived more than half a mile away; these visits were often a strange mixture of backwoods civility and the hostile curiosity with which outsiders are often regarded.
Mr. Dalton and Mr. Richmond sometimes ate the evening meal with us, and I sensed that they imposed upon us not only because they had taken to Andrew but also because our hospitality allowed us, in a small way, to compensate them for the pains they had taken on our behalf. Dalton and Andrew talked at great length about land clearance. Mr. Richmond said little, but he did not seem uneasy or resentful of Mr. Dalton’s interest in us. I surmised that Mr. Richmond was simply a quiet man, who rarely found in the routine of ordinary life circumstances that required speech.
While Andrew and Mr. Dalton talked-of how we were neglected by the East, of how the government in New York (and then Philadelphia) would not send soldiers to fight the Indians, and of how Hamilton’s schemes in the Treasury Department would destroy the poor man for the sake of the rich-Mr. Richmond would sometimes aid me in washing and replacing the dishes. He might sit with me while I spun or sewed, content to sip his whiskey and look as though he thought about significant things. Once, however, he turned to me and offered me a rare smile of crooked teeth. “Andrew is a great friend to him.”
There was something more than his words to what he said, but I did not understand it. I only replied simply, “I am glad of it. You have both been good to us.”
Richmond said nothing, and then, after a moment, “ Dalton is a good friend to have, but not to take advantage of.”
“I can assure you, Mr. Richmond, that Andrew would never-”
“I know Andrew would not,” he said.
I could not have been more surprised had he struck me. Did he accuse me of in some way abusing Mr. Dalton’s kindness? I turned to him, but he only shook his head, as if to say that the subject had been exhausted, and with that he left the room.
O ne night we sat with Mr. Richmond and Mr. Dalton, this time joined by Mr. Skye, the five of us enjoying some precious tea and sweet corn bread following a meal. Skye happened to glance over to a little round table next to our rocker upon which sat my copy of Postlethwayt. This interested him at once, and after rising to inspect its edition and condition, he inquired of Andrew what he did with such a book.
“’Tis not mine,” he said. “In truth, it’s too dull for me.”
“You, madam?” asked Skye. “You have an interest in finance and economical matters?”
“I do,” I said, feeling myself redden. I was not quite ready to reveal myself to be a budding authoress.
It was fortunate that he spared me a request for further explication. “Then perhaps you have some thoughts upon the latest news, just arrived in a mule train from the East this very day?” His gray eyebrows raised in amusement, or perhaps anticipation. “I spent the afternoon reading through the newspapers, and I cannot credit what I have discovered.”
“Then tell us,” said Andrew.
He smiled, clearly pleased to be the one to relate it, yet I could see it troubled him too. “The new treasury minister, Alexander Hamilton, has appointed an immediate assistant, the second most powerful man at the Treasury. With the influence that department is gaining over George Washington and the federal government as a whole, it makes him well near one of the most powerful men in the entire country. Can you guess of whom I speak, for he is known to us all?”
Dalton snorted. “We have no idea, so out with it, man.”
Andrew smiled. “I have no idea, but look at Joan. I think she knows.”
I had opened my mouth, but I had not yet spoken. It seemed to me impossible, but I could think of but one man who met the criteria Mr. Skye had outlined, and I could not, at first, bring myself to say his name out loud. “No,” I managed at last. “Not William Duer?”
Skye nodded. “How ever did you guess it?”
“She didn’t guess it,” said Andrew. “She merely drew the only logical conclusion. I did not myself, but now I see how she did so. He is, after all, the only man known to us all, and he did speak of his close ties to Hamilton when we met him.”
Dalton actually snarled in disgust. “It makes me ill to think that a man like Duer, who has made his living by cozening patriots, should be rewarded with such power and influence.”