Read Online A Light in the Wilderness by Jane Kirkpatrick - Free Book Online

matching a white man to a colored woman and sniff at the thought there could be love between them. There’d been plenty of white men who took wenches; they could never be joined in God’s eyes. But if love was there, then couldn’t such a marriage one day be? Marriages were arranged all the time by owners and sometimes love flourished. Look at Robin and Polly Holmes. They’d been mated by a master but love grew where only commerce had been intended and they’d had six children together. She wondered how they fared on the trail to Oregon, how they must have grieved leaving their three children behind. But their owner had promisedthem freedom if Robin helped him prove up his Oregon claim. The promise of freedom could be a balm to grief. It would be a balm to uncertainty too.
    Letitia pressed wooden pins over the sheet corners. Birds chirped and she heard a playful bark of Rothwell among the trees.
    If she accepted Davey’s offer, they’d head west. If she stayed, she’d have an uncertain road. Even though she earned money, she’d never be able to purchase his farm and have the safety of a shelter of her own, not in Missouri. Not in any slave state. Maybe one day somewhere free. And G.B. Smith would haunt her if she walked the roads at night. She’d heard of men carrying free papers who had been kidnapped, sold, the patrollers keeping the coins after destroying the papers and sending the free black into slavery. But in Oregon Davey could find new land. If he was a citizen. Maybe she could get free land too? She scoffed to herself at that. She’d always be at the mercy of people who saw her as property rather than her being able to buy property. If she bought another cow she’d have to get someone to buy it for her, as no one would trust that she hadn’t stolen the money.
    She was left with the next best path: having a say in what she cared about and deciding how she’d challenge any threats to that hope. Maybe those were the choices any human had, free or not.

6 Cleaving

    Davey chopped at weeds threatening the borders of Letitia’s garden. It had been a spur-of-the-moment comment to offer her an arrangement, one his fellow patrollers would scoff at. “Take the wench,” they’d tell him. Assumed he already had, likely. But Tish had a presence about her, a dignity and calm. She deserved to have respect. He wasn’t much of a planner. Being in Carroll Township inside Platte County raising stock was the most settled and organized he’d ever been, and he found the work less burdensome with the woman beside him. She held a steady hand, didn’t faint or falter at the sight of blood or bind like most women he encountered. And she wasn’t a minx like that Eliza either. I did not hurt that girl .
    The hoe snagged a rock as he chopped and he felt the vibration through the wooden handle clear to his clenched jaws. He stopped to rest, removed his floppy hat, and wiped his forehead of the August heat. If she agreed, what could he do to make it official-like, he wondered? No minister of the Word would allow it. He might get a lawyer sympathetic to the abolitionist cause to speak somelegal words to satisfy the woman. And himself for that matter. He didn’t want this arrangement to be a toss in the straw. He wanted to know she’d stand with him during planting and harvest, work beside him splitting logs and raising them to roof, and, God willing, bear his children. He didn’t want to have to chase her down if she took off running. Maybe he should seek out someone now. That way she’d know that he was making it as respectful as possible. Yes, that’s what he needed to do.
    He put up the hoe, washed his face and arms before heading out to Platte City. Here he was, planning ahead. Why, the woman had already changed his ways.

    Letitia walked the path to the colored church, a tiny clapboard building recently washed white as piano keys. She’d helped pay for the stain herself, being one of the few who attended who had a