The Middle of the Forest

In progress:

A novel about my maternal forbears, pioneering women from Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas

 

Chapter 1

 

Western Missouri

December 1836

 

Ailcy stood behind her mother’s rocker, gently brushing her hair. The younger boys sat on the floor, close to her feet, eager to hear another story, while Bob, the oldest of the boys, had taken their father’s chair by the fire.  Little Fanny slept quietly in her cradle.  Elizabeth rocked the chair gently, stroking her rounded belly.  The child was active tonight, its feet digging in under her ribcage.  It wouldn’t be much longer before the birth.  By now, she knew the signs.  The baby was nestling lower in her body, too large now to do the whole body flips it had relished in just weeks ago.  It had been a long day.  Her hands and feet were swollen and she was eager for bed, but the younger boys still delighted in the family stories, and their father had been away so long this time that she was starting to worry, and didn’t want them to catch on, so she began.

 

 

It was late fall, 1816.  We’d crossed Powell Valley.  Everybody had said that once we could see the white rocks on the clifftops, we’d know we wasn’t more than a day away from it.  Alice – your Aunt Ailcy (she smiled up at her daughter) and me were inside the wagon with the babies.  Ma had put us to watching them, and had us doing the needlework while we were at it.  You all know your aunt’s fine handwork, those tiny even stitches – your sister, thank the Lord, has her skills, for I sure don’t.  So I was stuck with the mending while Alice worked the pieces for a new quilt.  My foot had gone to sleep under me.  As big as that old Conestoga was, it was still cramped inside, especially since your Grandma Anglin had insisted on taking everything we had in the house in Pittsylvania County,  all the way from Virginia to Tennessee.  I shifted ‘til my foot woke up, and when I did, I could see her, sitting atop that giant of a horse – one of six that was pulling the wagon – her back was straight, and she sat perfectly aside.  She’d hooked her knee around the hames of that horse’s collar like it was the horn of a fine side-saddle instead of a harness.  Her bonnet kept me from seeing her face, but I knew its look just by the set of her back and neck.  Strong and determined.  Why, even in that short skirt and those buckskin leggings, you just knew she was born a lady…

 

Ailcy frowned a little, and held back a sigh.  Ma’s stories were always like this; she started talking and her words just went wherever her head took them.  She never understood why the boys liked them so.  She glanced over at Bob and his eyes met hers.  Here we go, they twinkled.  He had turned nine, two years younger than she was, and acting like the man of the house while Pa was gone.  But he really still liked hearing Ma talk as much as little Adrian and John Paul, sitting at her feet.  But she got that her mother was trying to keep anyone from worrying, so she gently steered her mother’s familiar story.  “Was that when Uncle Andy rode up?”

 

“Why, yes, Ailcy, it was…”

 

My brother Anderson rode up to the wagon, pulling another horse with him.  “Betty!”  he called in to me, “Betty, you just have to see!”  His calling woke the babies and Ma got so exasperated she sighed and said “Oh, go with your brother Elizabeth.  Alice can handle the little ones better, anyhow.”  I was so ready to get out of that wagon I barely bothered to think that my ma and my sister would be shaking their heads over my lack of graces.  The horses back was bare, so I jumped on astride, and rode off behind Andy at a gallop, guiding the horse with my knees.  We cut through some trees and onto a road so narrow I wondered if those big wagons would get through it.  Up ahead of us was bare daylight, coming between the trees, getting wider and lighter as we rode, until all of a sudden, it lay there before us:  the biggest valley I’d seen since we left Roanoke – all spread out; a narrow river running off to the right of it.  I had never seen such a vast, open space.  And as far as you could see, barely a house or a smokestack.  “We’re here, Betty.  We’ve been following it since we entered the trees.  These horses are standing square on the edge of it.”

 

“The Gap,”  I barely whispered it.

 

“You bet,” Andy said back.  “Right where Boone found it.”

 

“Actually Andy, Daniel Boone was a long way from the first.”  Our Uncle Samuel, had ridden up behind us and we’d been riding so hard we barely noticed.  It was Uncle Sam’s second trip to Tennessee.  He and Aunt Caty had come through a few years back, and he had come back for us, to show us the way.  “There were several white men who came before him, and the Indians used it for hundreds of years before the first ships crossed the ocean.  Before that, it was worn into place by the animal herds that first used it as a crossing.”

 

“An animal trail?”  I asked.

 

“It began that way,” a familiar voice said behind her.  “In fact, practically our whole trip, from the Old Wagon Road we took from home to Roanoke, and the Wilderness Road we’ve been on since, were both animal trails even before there were Indians here.”

 

Our pa, your Grampa Anglin, had ridden up beside Uncle Sam, and smiled at me.  “So, Betty,” he then asked me, “What do you think of Kentucky?” 

 

“This is it?”  I looked down at the wild valley below.  “It’s beautiful, Pa!  Why don’t we stay here with the Hannah’s and our other families?” 

 

“You haven’t seen Tennessee yet, Miss Betty,” my uncle said.

 

“Is it much farther?”  I asked.

 

Andy laughed. “I would say so, Little Sister.  It’s as far from here to Nashville as it was from Martinsville to here.”

 

“Pa?”  I urned to my father, hoping my brother was joking, but he wasn’t.

 

“Don’t worry, Betty.”  You’ll be out of that wagon for a few days.  There’s a settlement not far, along the Yellow River you see below.  We’ll be staying there to rest and stock up.  And you won’t be leaving your cousins just yet.  We’ll all head west a ways, here in southern Kentucky, before they head north, and we head down toward Nashville.  We’ll be there before winter sets in.”

 

“Then I’ll be heading with Pa and Uncle Sam on down to Bedford County, to help get the cabin built, while you stay with Ma and Alice and the others in Nashville ‘til Spring,” bragged Andy.

 

Well, I wasn’t at all happy about that, and Andy had to rub it in.  I would be stuck in a strange town with Ma and Alice and the babies all winter.  Crossing the Gap lost some of its wonder, then.  I can tell you that.

 

“Nashville.  Wasn’t that where you met Mr. Houston?”  Bob chipped in.  They had met their Ma’s old friend before they left Tennessee. 

 

“He has to be the tallest man I’ve ever seen,” Ailcy added, “and the first time I saw him, I thought he was an Indian, the way he was dressed.”

 

“I suppose he was, then.”  Elizabeth mused.  “He’d been adopted by the Cherokees back in Tennessee.  That was just after his marriage was annulled and he quit the governor’s job there.”  The baby in her belly squirmed, and she patted it to quiet it down. 

 

Everyone got quiet then, and looked into the fire.  Little Adrian asked, “Is Texas very far away, Ma.”

 

“Far enough that your Pa may not have got my letter yet.  Men lose track of time, I think, when they have a war to fight.  Don’t worry, Adrian,” she smiled calmly.  “We will hear something soon.”

 

Ailcy and Bob looked at each other.  They had managed to get the conversation going just where they wished they hadn’t.  Ailcy knew she would have to do pennance, so she brightened her voice and asked her mother, “Tell us again about the first time you met Pa.”

 

Elizabeth laughed.  “Well, one thing I can tell you for sure is,  if anybody back then had of said that boy would be my husband some day, I’d have thought they were crazy for sure.”

 

But your Aunt Alice was different.  She took just one look at Nate Brown and knew she wanted to be his wife and have his children.  And she knew a good part of the trick to that was to convince our Pa it was a good idea.

 

Well, we were just getting in to the growing up stages, and at that time, I can tell you, one or two years makes a big difference.  Alice was a year older than me, and Nate older by a year or so than that.  And Billy Foster wasn’t quite as old as me, since I’d had my 13^th birthday and his wasn’t to come for a few more months.  He still had some growing to do before anybody could see the fine man he would turn out to be…

 

“HELLO, THE HOUSE!” they heard from a distance outside in the dark, but Ailcy knew at once whose voice she was hearing.

 

“PA!”  she shouted back.  Her mother was already out of the chair and waddling toward the front door.  “WILLIAM?”

 

The horses rode up quickly to the gate, and Ailcy could see by the moonlight two riders dismounting and running for the house.  One of them bolting the porch steps two at a time, grabbing her mother and planting her with an embarrassingly long kiss.  She looked at the other man, coming up more slowly.  “Welcome home, Uncle Nate!  How was Texas?”