“Oh, Elizabeth,” Harry says.
Her face is hot; her hands go to her cheeks.
“My mother told me,” he says, “that everyone has something. Some of us are good at a lot of things, some of us are good at only one, but everyone has something.”
A line of children pass, going from one room in the museum to another. She wonders about them. Which one is good in math? Good at hitting a ball? Good at singing? She has a sudden thought of Pop and his carvings, which everyone seems to admire, although she can’t exactly see why.
Harry’s hand is on her shoulder. “And you …,” he says.
She looks up at him, and he runs his finger across the tears on her cheek. “Ah, Elizabeth,” he says, “you’re all story.”
For a moment she doesn’t know what he means.
“I asked for a fact. What you gave me was so much more. Your head is filled with story.” His mouth isn’t steady. “How lucky you are. I’d rather have that than almost anything I can think of.”
She reaches out and puts her arms around Harry. She can’t even believe she’s doing it.
Filled with story.
She’d rather have that than almost anything, too.
So much of what she knows about Zee has to do with story: what has been passed down to Libby and Harry, and now to her. And she has added to it. Those bits and pieces that she’ll tell Pop, and maybe her own children someday.
Story.
zee
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Late in the afternoon we sat together in an old woman’s house, John on one side of me, Miller on the other. We filled her kitchen, the smell of battle still on our skin and clothes, coughing from the acrid smoke of muskets in our lungs.
The house was without windows, so the only light came from the hearth. I stared at the flames, wondering that anyone would have built up such a huge fire in August. I was shivering, though, and its warmth gave me comfort.
The woman passed out a cup of fermented cider, which we shared, each of us taking a mouthful. She had cut cheese from rounds and slabs of bacon, but I wasn’t hungry. Would I ever be able to swallow food again?
John’s face was filthy, his sparse beard matted, and his eyes closed, pale lashes clumped with tears.
Miller’s head was back against the wall. He looked as if he was too tired to sleep. “They’re sending General Arnold from Fort Dayton to help,” he said. “He has about nine hundred troops.”
“Will that be enough?” I thought about Father and the ravine and bodies piled like cords of wood on the marshy ground.
John opened his eyes. “I’ll go with General Arnold. And yes, those of us who are left will be enough. This is the turning point. Look around you. We’re toughened now, we can face anything. After today, we’ll never give up.” His eyes closed again, and he slept.
I watched the flames, sipping at the cider as the cup came around to me.
Miller stood up. “Come outside.”
In the doorway I blinked at the sharp light. We walked along a path that wandered around the edge of a stream.
“I’m not going to Stanwix with General Arnold,” Miller said slowly. “There’s the mill at home, and a harvest waiting. I’d rather fight, but our army will need food, and I’ll give everything I have to keep them going.” He touched my shoulder. “Don’t think I’m a coward.”
I smiled at that. “Who could ever think you’re a coward?” I said, echoing what he had said to me that morning. Only that morning?
“Oriskany will not be the end of the war,” Miller said. “It’s still the beginning. It will be years, Zee, but John is right. We are going to win.”
I thought about going home, but there was no home.
“Come with me, Zee.”
I turned to look up at him. I saw him building the henhouse, nails in his mouth. I saw him swinging me in the snow, laughing. How had I not seen what he was like? Who he truly was?
“Someday,” he said, “I’ll draw you standing outside the house we’ll build.”
I held out my scarred hands.
“Ah, your hands,” he said, and then I could see he was trying to smile. “Perhaps you’ll ruin the soap, and burn the bread. You may leave the gates open so the animals will wander free, and I’ll draw all of that. But I’ll draw you with strength in your face, because no one has more.”
I thought of the drawing of Stout Lucy and the day I’d seen him work on it.
“If I had something, I’d draw you now,” he said.
I reached under the handkerchief at my neck. The map was still there, and I gave it to him to use the other side. “But I have no cap,” I said.
He smiled. “Do you think I can’t remember?”
I sat there watching.
I had to go on to Fort Stanwix. I had to do my own part in this fight for our freedom. I wouldn’t tell him that yet, though, not until he finished the drawing.
elizabeth
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Harry pulls his dusty truck up to an equally dusty storefront in Utica. “This place has been here for as long as I can remember.”
Elizabeth glances at the window. There are stacks of chipped plates, an ancient jade plant in the center, and a pair of lamps with rosettes twirling around their bases.
“Everything stays the same,” Harry says. “I don’t think they’ve sold anything in twenty years. How they stay in business is a mystery. I stop in sometimes and wander around.”
Inside, there’s a musty smell; motes of dust dance across the back window.
Harry nods at the owner and takes Elizabeth’s elbow; they wend their way around old furniture to the side wall, where paintings in curlicue frames hang in uneven lines. “Not these,” Harry says, “it’s the drawings I want you to see.”
He’s excited. Elizabeth’s heart picks up. What has he found?
They walk past paintings of stiff women and bearded men, and in the very back are the drawings. “Do you remember”—Harry smiles down at her—“the mark on Zee’s drawing?”
“A bundle of sticks, tied in the middle.” She looks at the drawing in front of her. It has the same marks. “The same artist,” she breathes.
The owner comes up in back of them. He looks as old as the store itself, with gray hair to his shoulders, tiny glasses. “That’s a sheaf of wheat,” he says. “It was his mark. I don’t think he could read. Miller Wheeler was his name.” He waves his hand toward the wall. “I have two of his drawings. There are others in a museum in Albany.”
Elizabeth looks up at them. The first is a field, and two boys are fighting, rolling on the ground, drawn with just a few lines, but she can feel the movement, the energy of it. Looking on is a girl. And in back of them is a river. The Delaware River, of course. Is it Zee? Only her profile is visible. “Are they her children?”
“I don’t think so.” The owner shrugs. “She looks younger than the boys who are fighting, doesn’t she?”
Elizabeth leans forward. “It might have been before the war,” she says, “before Zee went to Oriskany. A warm day, maybe, and they’ve been planting. They stop—”
“You like to tell stories,” the owner says, and she feels that burst of happiness in her chest.
“It’s the next one you’ll want to see,” Harry says gently.
Elizabeth takes a step; her hand goes out. It’s Zee, Elizabeth would know her anywhere: that button nose, those apple cheeks. But it’s an older Zee, a laughing Zee. She stands at the edge of the same field, holding a toddler, and two boys stand next to her. If it weren’t for the old-fashioned clothes, they could be standing there today.
“After Oriskany,” Elizabeth begins slowly, “a Loyalist named Han Yost Schuyler told St. Leger that the Patriot side’s General Arnold was coming. He pointed to the trees, as if to say, ‘with as many men as there are leaves.’ ”
Harry finishes for her. “St. Leger retreated, leaving Fort Stanwix to the Americans.”
Was Zee there? Did she see the flag flying ove
r the fort? They’ll never know that. But Elizabeth is sure the war was over when Miller Wheeler drew Zee and the children. Their children, she’s sure of it.
“Yes,” Harry says, even though Elizabeth hasn’t said it aloud, and he buys the drawings, of course.
“Zee for you,” he says. “And the field …”
Elizabeth expects him to say “for me.”
Instead, he says, “The field for Libby.”
On the way back to Libby’s house, Elizabeth clutches the drawings to her. In his way, Miller has told her the story. She can picture Zee as an old lady with white hair under her cap and dozens of grandchildren, one of them Elizabeth’s own great-great-great-grandmother.
zee
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
On a beautiful spring morning, I stood at the edge of the field with Rachael in my arms and the boys, tall now, next to me.
The war was over. How long ago it seemed.
After the British left Fort Stanwix without a fight, John and I came home together. On the way, we stopped, trying to find Mother’s small things, but my cave was gone, buried somewhere under stone or mud from a storm.
But that wasn’t the important thing. It was the land that meant everything, our land for which we had fought so hard.
At last, we reached our own green field. Miller found us there; he came toward us, arms out.
I told Toby and Matthew the story of the war; soon Rachael will be old enough to hear it, too. I’ll tell her about the dear ones we lost. I’ll promise her we’ll always be free.
Because it was spring, I reminded the boys of Old Gerard and what he had told me years before. “Look up. See the oak leaves like furry mouse ears? That means it’s time to plant.” The boys laughed as I added my own words: “Whisper to the seeds. Tell them to be happy down there.”
I knew they’d remember those words when they helped their father with the planting, then helped John and his boys, and Julian across the river.
Miller glanced up from the drawing he was doing of the four of us. “Ah, Zee,” he said. “So many stories to tell.”
I nodded, smiling through a quick glint of tears as I remembered. Hard stories, some of them.
But now I smelled the bread baking. I had to hurry before it burned again.
elizabeth
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
It’s Tuesday night. Elizabeth has spent her last day in school exchanging hugs and e-mail addresses.
Now the duffel bags are in the hall. Elizabeth and Libby stand next to the door, waiting. Pop has called on his cell phone to say that he’s just pulled off the highway. He’ll be there any minute.
Elizabeth looks up at Zee in her thin silver frame, and next to Elizabeth, Libby has tears in her eyes. “You’re coming back,” she says fiercely. “You’re your father’s girl, but you belong to us, too, now.”
Harry has said almost the same thing. “In July,” he says, “we’ll search around together and see if we can find the old caves. Three cousins, why not?”
They probably won’t find anything, but it doesn’t make any difference. She’ll come back for a long visit.
Zee has changed her life.
But as she sees Pop’s car pull up, she can’t wait. She opens the door and runs outside. He’s given her all this; for the first time she realizes it. What had he said? It’s time for you to know your mother’s family.
She stops in the middle of the path as he opens the door. She’s going home to find out about Pop, about his carvings, and about what it’s like to have a daughter who spills things, who’s a little bit messy, but who loves him. She’s going to find out his story. And she’s going to make sure he knows hers.
She can’t wait to begin.
author’s note
Fort Stanwix was built by the British but fell into disuse before the Revolutionary War. The Patriots rebuilt it, renaming it Fort Schuyler. After Colonel St. Leger’s failed attempts to capture it in 1777, the fort was damaged by fire and heavy rain; it was abandoned in 1781. The fort, once again called Stanwix, has been restored for visitors. Throughout this book I have called it Fort Stanwix, as it was known originally and is still called today.
After he was wounded, Colonel Nicholas Herkimer was taken back to his house in what is now Little Falls, New York. He died of infection several days later. The house is a museum now, and is open to the public.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m truly grateful to everyone at the Schenectady County Public Library for their help, and especially to Mary Trivilino for her warmth and encouragement; to Robert Sullivan for his patience, expert knowledge, and willingness to answer my questions, which made all the difference; and to Karen Bradley, who made sure I had a place to work and everything I needed. A wonderful library; wonderful librarians.
I wish to thank Wendy Lamb, my editor, and George Nicholson for their support, and of course, my family: my husband, Jim; my children, Jim, Bill, and Alice. I’m blessed by their love.
PATRICIA REILLY GIFF is the author of many beloved books for children, including the Zigzag Kids series, the Kids of the Polk Street School books, the Friends and Amigos books, and the Polka Dot Private Eye books. Several of her novels for older readers have been chosen as ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Books and ALA-YALSA Best Books for Young Adults. They include The Gift of the Pirate Queen; All the Way Home; Nory Ryan’s Song, a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Honor Book for Fiction; and the Newbery Honor Books Lily’s Crossing and Pictures of Hollis Woods. Lily’s Crossing was also chosen as a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book. Her most recent books include Water Street, Eleven, and Wild Girl. Patricia Reilly Giff lives in Connecticut.
Patricia Reilly Giff, Storyteller
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