CHAPTER 1Easter Day, 1883
It was a moment filled with hope, the moment Daniel was born.
“Not one Hutchinson man has made it to middle age,” Joseph whispered into the ear of his sleeping newborn son, “—yet.”
Many Hutchinsons married, some started families, all worked the farm, but none made it further than a few years past their twenty-first birthday.
Everyone in the small Long Island town whispered under their breath that it was Gods will. Some shuddered, saying it was a curse or the evil eye. Others insisted it was simply plain, old bad luck.
No explanation made sense because the Hutchinsons were the best kind of people youd ever want to meet. There was nothing they would not do for you, and everyone in town had a story to tell about a good deed done for them by a Hutchinson. But for all their good deeds, in the end, the Hutchinsons could not keep their boys out of harms way.
On the day Daniel was born, all of his ancestors unfulfilled dreams shifted onto him. The accumulated hopes of generations were laid upon his innocent shoulders before he had taken the first drink of his mothers milk. Maybe with him the spell would be broken, and the Hutchinson men would live into old age. Joseph Hutchinson was counting on it.
“You have a lot to live up to, Daniel,” he said rocking his son in his arms, if indeed he was to live at all.
Josephs father died at twenty-five years of age. It was a straightforward fall off a horse that should have given him nothing more than some scratches and a good story to tell the children at the noon meal.
“Theres no reason for the fall to have taken his life,” the doctor had said.
But there it was, he was a Hutchinson, and his time had come.
Ten years later, Joseph inherited the farm from his mother, who had worked so hard to keep it afloat by herself that it was probably more the cause of her fatal illness than the “weak heart” the doctor blamed. Plain and simple, she was worn out.
A week after laying his mother to a well-deserved rest, Joseph took over right where she had left off. He quickly learned that he would not be working the farm; the farm would be working him.
“You had better be strong.” Joseph addressed the baby he cradled protectively in his arms, his firstborn son whom he had helped his wife, Miriam, birth twelve hours earlier.
***
Miriam had not recognized the labor pains that grew worse over the course of the afternoon. She shrugged them off as a bellyache from a bowl of oatmeal too hastily eaten at sunrise. After all, the baby wasnt due for a month.
Moreover, she was preoccupied with her work in the field. Farmwork was exacting; everything was precisely timed in preparation for the harvest. Neither she nor Joseph could afford to take an afternoon off as the land hardly provided enough for them to make it through the year.
It was for this reason that Miriams mother had pleaded with her not to marry this boy. Miriam could recite their argument by heart…
“I dont mean to meddle, sweetheart, but if you ask me—”
“But I havent asked you, Momma,” Miriam sighed.
“Honey, Josephs prospects are dim,” she lowered her voice lest she be overheard, “and hes cursed. All the Hutchinson men are. Everyone knows it.”
“I dont care about everyone.” Miriam was convinced that her love was strong enough to save him from the Hutchinson fate. “Nothing matters but that I love him.”
“Im sure you do. Joseph is a handsome young man, but marriage is for life.” She knew that death was only a concept to her daughter; Miriam was still a baby when her father died. But she pressed on anyway. “Who will take care of your children should he—” she searched with care for the next words, “pass unexpectedly?”
“The Bible says that love is stronger than death, Momma. Are you saying that the Bible isnt true?”
“I wont argue the Bible with you—”
“Then maybe youve just forgotten what it is like to be young.” Miriam tried every argument she could think of.
“Dont put me in the grave just yet. I am not that old.”
“Joseph has dreams, Momma. One day hes going to be more than a farmer—so much more!”
“Im all for dreams, Daughter, but it is reality that puts food on the table.”
Miriam stopped arguing and put her whole heart into begging. “Please say yes, Mother.”
All the women in her family had minds of their own, and her daughter was no different. Yet she couldnt help but smile. For all of Miriams timidity, once she set her heart on something, it was already hers. “He seems to be a good man, that Joseph Hutchinson.”
“Oh, Momma, thank you,” she squealed with relief. “From the day I set eyes on him at the county store I knew that he would ask me to marry him.” And she knew, too, that she would say yes.
“It sounds like love…,”Mother said, drifting back to the moment she had laid eyes on the dashing gentleman with the pencil-thin mustache thirty years her senior who had taken her heart. “Love at first sight.”
“Exactly,” Miriam exclaimed. Love at first sight is exactly what it was with Joseph Hutchinson…
Miriam was surprised when her water broke in the cornfield, and by the time she reached the house she did not have the strength to make it up the single flight of stairs to her bed. Other than her feather mattress, the Hutchinson farmhouse had little to offer in the way of comfort. Inside, like the outside, was a study in simplicity and efficiency. There was the front room where they sat and the kitchen (with a cellar beneath it) where they ate, with a stone fireplace covering one entire wall. On the second floor there were two bedrooms spacious enough only for sleeping and dressing, and atop that a cramped attic nestled beneath the steeply pitched roof. Miriam lay down on the cushioned bench in the front room and waited for her husband to come and wash up for the noon meal. She could do no more than wait.
She did not have to wait long. Forty minutes later Joseph sauntered into the kitchen, clenching a raggedy bunch of wildflowers in his fist.
“Miriam,” he called out, “I have a gift for you.” One day he promised himself hed be able to afford real gifts, not ones stolen from the earth.
Miriams mother had tried to prepare her for the pain of childbirth, but nonetheless Miriam cried out with the intensity of it. “Im here.”
She did not want to be doubled over in front of Joseph, but the contractions were coming faster and were harder to bear.
Though she was only in the next room, her answer sounded weak and far away. He moved toward her voice, and when he saw her chalky white complexion and her lips drained of color, he ran to her side, dropping the flowers and falling to his knees.
“Its just labor pains, Joseph—” her words cut short by another contraction that shot through her body.
“It cant be. Its a full month early,” Joseph explained, as if declaring it made it so. He laid his hands on her swollen belly that felt near about to burst. But what if she was right? He shuddered with an animal fear that all men feel at such a time, when they know they are powerless to stop nature from taking its course. “Miriam, I am telling you it is too early.”
She couldnt help but laugh—at seventeen, her husband was still a boy. “Early or not, our baby is coming.”
“But, Miriam,” he said, trying to reason with her, “you dont understand. There is no time to get the midwife. Even if I fly, I wont return with her in time.”
He stood up and began to pace the length of the front room. “What shall we do?” he asked, his voice cracking with emotion.
“You will have to do what has to be done, Joseph.” She said it just like that, as if birthing a baby was something Joseph had done just the other day.
He looked at her incredulously.
Miriam knew her man; he was capable of rising to the occasion.
Josephs panic increased, but he knew she was right.
“Theres something I must do first, and when I come back, I will be your manly midwife.” With something to do he no longer felt powerless.
She smiled at his attempt at humor, envisioning Joseph in an apron doing her bidding.
***
When Miriam first laid eyes on him in the county store, it was she who was wearing the apron, and she doing his bidding. Naturally, she had heard the gossip about the curse, but here was Joseph standing before her just as handsome as he could be. “Can I help you find what youre looking for?” she asked.
“I think I mightve already found it,” Joseph responded with more boldness than he knew he possessed. “Im Joseph Hutchinson,” he said, offering his hand.
She took his hand in both of her own as if it were a prize she had just been awarded at the fair.
Her gentle touch urged him on. “Would you like to take a walk with me on Sunday afternoon?”
“Ill have to ask permission from my mother.”
“Do you think your mother will like someone like me?” he asked with the confidence of a man twice his age. The last time Joseph was smitten by love hed lost his senses, but with this girl he seemed to have full dominion over them. “What do you say?”
“Ill have to let you know…”
“When?”
His forwardness scared her and thrilled her. “Tomorrow?” she stuttered.
The blush coloring her cheeks encouraged him. “That means Ill have to come back into town tomorrow.”
“I suppose it does,” Miriam said. “Im sorry.”
“No, youre not! Youre not the least bit sorry.”
Miriam broke into a glorious smile. She liked him. No, she more than liked him.
Her smile expanded until Joseph felt its warmth envelop him. He, who spent his days beneath the dark Hutchinson cloud, found himself unexpectedly standing in the presence of a bright sun. And it was shining directly upon him.
They stood for a moment, face to face, silently contemplating each other.
Maybe her light was bright enough to burn away the black Hutchinson fate. “Then, I will see you tomorrow, Miss—”
“You may call me Miriam.”
“Miriam.” The soft vowels felt nice against his hard life.
“Then Ill see you tomorrow, Miriam. And the day after that, and the day after that!”
“Thats too much,” she said, responding with words more proper than accurate. “What will people think?”
“What they think wont keep me from coming back day after day til Im sure that you wont change your mind about me between now and Sunday.”
She sensed that Joseph saw right through to her soul-saw that she would go walking with him on Sunday no matter what her mother said…
Joseph knelt down beside Miriam and took his wifes hands in his own. He pressed them hard, trying to transfer his strength to her. “I will come back,” he said. “Just give me a few minutes.” Then he stood up and ran out of the front room.
He hurriedly climbed the first flight of stairs, rushing past the two small bedrooms and hall storage cubby and then the final steps to the attic door. He unlocked the plain unpainted pine door with a key that only he possessed and entered the small space that was his refuge, his stronghold.
He locked the door behind him and walked the few steps to the chair in the center of the dimly lit room. He sat down, closed his eyes, and tried to concentrate. But who could concentrate at a time like this?
Without money to pay for a doctor and without time to call on the midwife, Joseph placed the fullness of his faith in this stuffy little attic that had served as his holy temple since the day it answered his first prayer years ago.
When Joseph was a boy living in a house full of Hutchinsons, he shared his small bedroom with two brothers; he had no place to call his own. No sooner had he set his sights on the cellar than his mother declared in a tone that left little room for discussion, “The cellars no place for a boy.”
It was his older brother, Luke, who suggested the attic. “Ma doesnt go up there at all except to pile up stuff that nobody wants.” That very day Joseph claimed it as his own and soon he labeled it his “thinking through” place.
Despite the limited space, this attic housed all things Hutchinson—a collection of broken furniture and crates filled with clothes, toys, nonsense, and what-nots. They were all consecrated artifacts to Joseph; all imbued with the special power that ancient history accords things. It was amidst this history that he found his security in times of need.
One lonely night, on a lark, he prayed to the power of the attic for love, and a few months later he was hired to work on Grace Browns farm. The attic had answered his prayer. After that Joseph unquestioningly trusted in the power of this room.
“Help me to deliver my firstborn child.” His current prayer was simple and to the point.
Only two minutes of silence passed before Joseph said, under his breath, “Thank you,” and swiftly exited the room, locking the door behind him. Once outside the door, his wifes cry quickly brought him back to the reality at hand.
Three hours and twenty-two minutes later, his baby boy with black hair and blue eyes was born. Joseph cut the umbilical cord perfectly and left the two of them alone only after they had fallen sound asleep in each others arms. He tiptoed out of the house to begin his search for the perfect piece of wood. Working with wood brought him happiness and a peace of mind like nothing else. Less so now with the responsibilities of manhood, but when Joseph was younger, there was always a piece of wood for carving in one of his many pockets.
By the time his sons first cry for food and attention and love reached his ears, Joseph had carved his son a toy he knew would delight him. It was a soldier that moved its arms and legs in unison when you pulled the string at the top of his little helmet. But no matter how hard Joseph giggled at the sight of the silly, dancing soldier he dangled before Daniel, the single crease line drawn straight across his forehead, a trademark of all the Hutchinson males, never lessened.