Am I My Brother’sKeeper?

Jacob led his horses into their stalls for what he intended would be the last time for a while, maybe ever. The harvest was in, the equipment cleaned and oiled for the winter. Now the horses had been combed out and bedded down. Tomorrow he would leave the farm for the West to build a prosperous future. He estimated it would take three years to acquire enough to invest in his own company. In the meantime, Pa and the hired hand would help Rachel tend to the hard work of his farm, immediately adjacent to their own. Jacob would send back money as he could.

“I really wish you would reconsider, Jake,” Rachel persisted, knowing her efforts were futile. Jacob calculated carefully before deciding something, and when he decided, it was done. But somewhere out there was Caleb, gone six years without any word, and now she was afraid of losing his older brother to that same wilderness. She looked tenderly at Gabriel, who was drifting into sleep while sitting by the fireplace. She scooped him up and carried him to his bed. It was no good raising a boy with no men around. Jacob’s father was getting too old to roll around and wrestle with him; long years of hard labor had made him tough, but he was no longer pliant.

Returning to the parlor, she resumed her place in the rocking chair by the fireplace and bent herself to the task of sewing, her eyes sharp enough to thread the needles even in the uncertain light of flickering candles and the fire going in the hearth. It was just big enough to take the chill out of the autumn night, but not as big as it would need to be in the months to come, when winter would arrive and her husband would be away.

“Staying here,” Jacob reminded her of their previous conversations on the topic, “we will continue to get by, just like my folks and yours always have. We get by, but we don’t get ahead. A few years of trapping and I can afford to buy into the company, where the real money is made, in trading. And then we’ll buy a nice home