Wilderness Run by Maria Hummel

ready?”
    Bel nodded, inhaling her mother’s clean scent. She was proud that Faustina was the prettiest woman in the room, prettier even than Lucia and Anne, whom everyone called the “golden Lindsey girls”—a reference Bel’s mother said was crass, and not entirely related to their blond hair. She was ready, but she would have to wait through several of the graduates first. At the front of the room, Mrs. Ellsley was introducing Mary Ruth Cross, who would recite a portion of The Song of Hiawatha.
    It was a very short portion indeed, and delivered in a blushing stammer that made the gathered mothers wave their fans faster, as if to speed up time itself. The fathers loaded their pipes and settled in for a long wait through Hannah Fithian’s tolerable version of Milton’s “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent,” and several attempts at Psalm 23 by the girls who so succeeded at Mrs. Ellsley’s schooling that they could not decide anything for themselves and had gratefully accepted an assignment. Upon the last half-whispered “and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever,” Mrs. Ellsley cleared her throat viciously and announced that they had a “special guest” in Miss Isabel Lindsey, who had not attended her school but who had undertaken the task of memorizing Shakespeare. The audience clapped dutifully. Swaying slightly in the new heaviness of her petticoats, Bel walked to the front and faced them all.
    In the back, by the tall windows that looked out on the road, Lucia and Anne stood with Morey Aldridge, the son of a shipbuilder. His severe features had been transformed lately into awkward grins and guffaws by the twins’ attentions. Aldridge was rumored to be coming into a large inheritance, and the twins fought over him with gentle savagery, each employing her best wiles. Lucia was winning, for she had a prettier voice than Anne, and her low, indulgent laugh was contagious. She had worn her sallow blond hair loose for the occasion, and it hung limply in the heat, but Anne’s was worse, knotted in numerous braids that wound around her head like snakes. Bel saw Morey Aldridge whisper something in Lucia’s ear, his black eyebrows knitting together. When Lucia smothered a giggle with her hand, Bel was suddenly struck by the fear that soon they might all be laughing at her.
    Although she had uttered the speech a thousand times, now the dull, expectant eyes of two dozen adults and children blended into one giant gaze. Opening her mouth, Bel waited for the sound to rise as it always did, but nothing came. The wind blowing through the propped door smelled like sawdust from the lumberyards. Her neck itched. Then, looking out the window behind Lucia’s head, way in the distance, Bel glimpsed a boy running up the lane toward her uncle’s house. He must be coming from the post office, she thought, and the wonder at the news he would bring jarred her into speech. She had to say it now, or she might never again get the chance.
    â€œOnce more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
    Or close up the wall with our English dead!
    In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
    As modest stillness and humility…”
    The boy stumbled and fell to his knees, ripping a hole in his trousers. He rose and ran on, the torn piece flapping. His blond hair slapped against wide red ears. Bel recognized him, the son of the liveryman in town. His hair was always too long and his pants too short, and he often delivered messages because he was the fastest runner among all the boys, even barefoot. The speech came easily now, but the messenger was so close, she could see the spurs of dust lifting from his heels. She went on, watching him come, his face tight with excitement. What would he say? Would the war be over? Would Laurence come home?
    â€œâ€˜On, on, you noble New Englanders,’” she commanded, changing the speech, as the fathers and mothers