by Ron Carter
“What did you dream?”
For a moment Dorothy hesitated. “Your father.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“He called my name, and I called his.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like always. Strong. Gentle.”
“Do you love him?”
“Always.”
“Did he talk about me?”
“In a way. He came to see his family.”
“Was Billy with him?”
“No. Your father is in heaven with God and the angels. Billy is just away for a while, with the army.”
“When is Billy coming back?”
“As soon as he can. Now you hush and go to sleep.”
From the street came the call, much closer, louder. “Half past four. Fair weather. Half past four.”
Trudy twisted her face toward Dorothy. “What is that?”
“The bellman. You’ve heard him before.”
“But I didn’t know.”
“The bellman walks the streets at night. A man, and a boy, with a lantern on a long pole. They call out the time and tell the weather. They’re our friends. They watch for bad men and keep us safe at night. Now you go back to sleep.”
In the warmth of the bed, curled against her mother, Trudy closed her eyes, and Dorothy waited until the girl’s breathing became slow and regular before she allowed herself to drift into a dreamless sleep.
She started at the voice of the bellman once more. “Half past five o’clock. Fair weather. Half past five o’clock.”
Gently she slipped her arm from her daughter and sat up silently in the bed. The first faint light of the quiet time between full darkness and sunrise showed through the window curtains. She swung her feet to the oval rag rug that she had patiently braided with her dark-eyed daughter, teaching her, watching her earnest face as she worked with the heavy, wooden hook to pull the corded rags through the succeeding loops. She stood in the darkness and then walked barefoot, out of her bedroom, down the chilly, polished hardwood floor of the hall, past Trudy’s door, into the parlor.
The coals banked last night in the fireplace still glowed under a layer of ash. Exposing the coals with a poker and sprinkling a handful of fine shavings of dried pine on them, she used an aged leather bellow to coax a finger of flame from the smoking heap. She added a few sticks of larger kindling and after they caught, some bigger pieces of chopped wood. With the fire lighting the room, she straightened to look at the clock on the mantel, and for a moment admired the delicate oak-leaf design worked into the polished wood. It was a Dunson clock, crafted by John Dunson, and given to her as a gift by his family many years before. The clock read forty minutes past five o’clock.
With the thought of John Dunson, the pain of that dread day—April 19, 1775—rose searing in her breast. That was the day the Americans had met the British on the green at Lexington, and then at the North Bridge in Concord, eighteen miles west of Boston, and turned them, driving the redcoats in a panic back to Boston. The day Tom Sievers had brought John Dunson home, shot through the lung by a .75-caliber ball from a British Brown Bess musket. The day John died in his home. The day her Billy was shot in the side by the redcoats, then bayoneted and left for dead. The day that changed the world forever.
“Three quarters past five o’clock. Fair weather. Three quarters past five o’clock.” The call came from the street again, much closer.
She stood silent for a moment, waiting to see if the bellman’s call would waken Trudy. There was no sound, and she drew and released a great sigh. Unexpectedly, in the twilight of the room, she was seeing the round, plain face, sandy red hair, and square, strong build of her only son, a copy of his father. Her breath came short at the familiar, sudden clutch of fear. Her eyes opened wide as the thoughts came flooding.
Is Billy safe? Well? Still in Morristown with General Washington? Or has there been another battle? Is he wounded? Dying? Dead?
Images of torn, dead bodies on distant battlefields came rushing, and she could no longer stand still with the torment. She set her jaw and drove the terrifying scenes away, murmuring, “This isn’t getting the work done.” The relentless, grinding business of living left little time for a widow to ponder her pain, her wounds of life, when she had a household to manage and a nine-year-old daughter to raise.
Today candles had to be made from tallow she had carefully saved from every piece of meat she had cooked through the long, cold months of winter. She had boiled the fat and tallow, carefully strained it twice through cheesecloth, then stored it in the cool of the vegetable cellar in the backyard beside the waxy residue she had cooked and skimmed from the wild bayberries gathered last fall and saved in pewter jars. She could not afford to pay the itinerant candlemaker to spend a day at her home with the heavy iron kettles, and the fires, pouring the smoking wax and tallow into the molds. If she were careful, she could sell most of her spring candles at the beginning of the fall season.
She straightened and walked silently to the window and pushed the curtain aside to peer out at the rose colors rising in the eastern sky. To the north, nearly to the corner of the street, a single lantern carried on a pole cast faint, long shadows on the cobblestones of two figures, bellmen, walking side by side—one large, one smaller. They were two of the thirteen “sober, honest men and householders” selected by the citizens of Boston to walk the streets at night in pairs, watching for thieves, and calling out the hour and the weather for those who were awake to hear.
Dorothy squared her shoulders and turned back toward her bedroom. Fair weather. Cool enough to dip them out of doors and warm enough to let them set up without cracking. A good day for candlemaking. Time to start the fires.
With the growing firelight sifting down the hall and into her bedroom, Dorothy silently collected the clothing she needed, paused for a moment to bend and lightly kiss the hair of her sleeping child, then walked from the room, quietly latching the door behind. She went into Trudy’s bedroom, where she laid her work clothes on the bed, then went to her knees, hands clasped, head bowed.
“Almighty and merciful God, hallowed be Thy name. Thy will be done. In humility I beseech Thee, spare and protect my Billy in his adversity. Bless Bartholomew. Bless and protect Trudy and all who enter this household this day. For all good things I thank Thee. Amen.”
She rose and quickly straightened the bed, changed from her nightshirt into a plain gray cotton work dress, slipped into her heavy shoes, tied her hair back with a white bandanna, and tiptoed down the hall, through the kitchen, out into the small backyard, quiet in the growing light of a new day in Boston Town. A faint, cool, salty seabreeze came off the harbor and for a moment the old, familiar ache rose inside as memories of Bartholomew came, and she paused.
Square, powerful, homely, first-mate on a fishing boat, he had met her when his boat was nearly sunk in a hurricane off the Grand Banks and had limped into Gloucester harbor for repairs. She had lived there, and he had seen her at church. The second Sunday he had stopped her, and with downcast eyes and awkward words had asked if she would allow him to write. They exchanged letters, and within weeks he reappeared. Would she consider marriage to such a man as he?
Dorothy held no illusions about herself. Stocky, plain, round-faced, friend to many, sweetheart to none, she had been courted by no other man—never asked for her hand. Yes, she would marry him. The reverend in Gloucester wed them that very day, and she joined Bartholomew on his boat back to Boston.
He had loved her with all his heart, and she had loved him, oblivious to the rough, direct ways of a man whose life had been spent at sea. They had lost one child, then came Billy: barrel-chested, sandy haired, plain—the image of his father. Their daughter, Trudy, was born years later, and then one day Dorothy answered a knock on her door. She knew the instant she saw the man standing on the doorstep, working his seaman’s cap in his hands, refusing to look her in the eye. Her Barthol
omew had been lost at sea.
For a time, her sole reason for living was the children. Stoically, as though detached from all feeling, all reality, she kept an austere house and took in laundry, braided rugs, learned to be a midwife, baked for neighbors, did needlepoint—anything to honorably scrape together enough money to pay the cost of maintaining her small family. Through it all, the Dunson family had been there to bring in food, help during times of sickness, and Margaret to talk. Matthew, Margaret’s eldest son, was the brother Billy never had. The boys grew, and through the years became inseparable.
Then came the day when her adolescent Billy had faced her in his bedroom. With trembling lip he had said, “Mother, father died a long time ago, and it seems that some of you died with him.”
White-hot pain had gone through her like a sword as she realized that in sealing her grief away from her heart, she had sealed the children away as well. She had flung her arms about Billy and buried her face in his shoulder as the inner wall crumbled, and they stood there alone, clinging to each other while racking sobs shook them both as they vented their festered sorrow. From that day, the healing began.
Dorothy heaved a sigh. The fires won’t start themselves.
She took a determined breath as she peered at the two black cast iron cooking pots turned over against the back wall of the house, inside the small wood yard, where she had placed them after dragging them out of the root cellar in the late afternoon of yesterday. Two heavy metal tripods leaned against the wall beside the pots. She moved them away from the wall and spread the tripod legs wide, with the center chain and the hook dangling low. She slipped the handle of the nearest pot over the tripod hook, then began working the tripod legs closer together, one at a time, until the pot was nearly two feet off the ground. Then she turned to the other pot and hooked it up to the second tripod.
She crouched to pile pine shavings and small sticks beneath each pot, then went back into the house to the fireplace, where she scooped glowing coals into a long-handled brass scoop, then hastened outside to spread them on the shavings. She watched until small yellow flames came licking, then added kindling.
While the flames grew and the pots heated, she went to the well for four dripping buckets of cold water and emptied them hissing into the two heated pots. Then she walked to the root cellar, lifted the heavy pine door, descended the five steps, and opened the second door into the chill, damp darkness. With the doors open for light, she carried the first two jars of clean, strained tallow outside and set them close to the fire. She had made the third trip to the vegetable cellar before the hard tallow in the first two jars had softened around the sides enough for her to lift them with thick burlap pads and turn them upside down above each pot, waiting for the hard lumps of tallow to slide out, splashing into the hot water. She set the empty jars on the ground, then waited for the tallow in the other jars to soften around the edges before she emptied them into the pots. She watched and waited while the large lumps of floating tallow slowly heated, and wisps of steam began to rise as they melted and spread on the water.
She leaned over one pot to smell the thick, animal odor, made her judgment, then returned to the cellar for four smaller jars of clear, light-green wax, cooked down last fall from wild bayberries she and Trudy had gathered along the shores of the Boston peninsula. Together they had skimmed the dirty green residue from the pots to strain and refine it into a clear, sweet-smelling wax, and then stored it for spring candlemaking. When mixed with the tallow, the pungent bayberry wax gave the candles a pleasant scent instead of the malodorous smell of animal tallow. She warmed the jars, emptied two into each pot of tallow, and watched them bob before they began to melt.
That should be enough. She straightened and turned to look toward the east, where the risen sun had turned the tops of the trees to fire, shot through with the gold and rose colors of a warm, spectacular Boston May morning. For a moment she stood still, breathing the clear, clean air, savoring the salt tang, caught up in the revival of the earth after a hard, gray winter. She reveled in the renewal of the earth, and the promise of the goodness it would bring. She filled her lungs and caught the sweetness of pink peach and white apple blossoms and red and yellow tulips just opening. Her elderly neighbor, Florence McIvers, hair bound back by a sky-blue bandanna, called a cheery “Good morning” over the white picket fence, and Dorothy brightened as she waved and returned the greeting. A smile came, and she realized she was humming as she walked back into the kitchen.
She found Trudy sitting on the polished hardwood floor before the fireplace in the parlor, arms wrapped about her knees, which were drawn to her chin, watching the dancing flames and the glowing coals. The French braid of her long dark hair hung far down her back. She turned her head as Dorothy walked from the kitchen through the archway.
“I couldn’t find you when I got up. Then I heard you in the backyard.”
“You forgot. We make candles today. They’ll bring in a few dollars for meat.”
“Are we going to have breakfast?”
“Soft-boiled eggs on bread and milk. Get washed and put on your work clothes. If you hurry we might have some honey on bread.”
Dorothy transferred hot coals from the fireplace to the fire box in the small, black cast iron stove in the kitchen to start the fire before she went to the root cellar for two eggs and a pat of butter. She dipped water from the kitchen water bucket into a small pewter pan and set the eggs to heat, then went quickly to her room to wash, brush her hair, and tie it back with the white bandanna once again.
“Trudy! Don’t dawdle.”
Hurrying feet sounded in the hall. “I’m here, mother. Help me with my hair. I’ve brushed it.”
“I’ve showed you how.”
“It’s hard when I can’t see it . . .”
“Feel and go slow. You can do it.”
Trudy plumped herself down on her breakfast chair, mouth clamped shut in disgust, and slowly divided her hair into three long locks. “I can’t start it.”
“Yes, you can.” Dorothy opened the cupboard to lift out two pewter plates and cups and did not look at Trudy.
Working with her hands behind her head, Trudy slowly lifted one lock over the next one, then the third lock back over the two, and was soon working more rapidly. She finished the long French braid, tied the end with a small white ribbon, and walked to her mother for approval. Dorothy diverted her eyes to look for a moment, then reached to touch the braid.
“Fine. Not too tight.” She looked her daughter in the eye and gave her a five-second New England lecture. “Don’t ask for help you don’t need. It wastes time and makes lazy hands.”
Trudy shrugged. “Do we get honey?”
“Fetch it from the root cellar. And bring some buttermilk.”
Trudy brightened and trotted from the room.
They blessed the bounties of their table and cracked their soft eggs on the sliced bread before Dorothy carefully poured steaming milk over it. Trudy broke the yellow yolk of her egg with her fork and watched it spread to make designs in the white milk and on the soggy bread. Eyes wide in anticipation, the young girl spread butter high on a separate slice of bread and smeared honey deep while Dorothy poured thick buttermilk into their pewter mugs. Trudy said nothing as she spooned the bread and egg and hot milk and stuffed her mouth with the bread and honey, to wash it all down with buttermilk.
Dorothy covertly watched, finding a mother’s joy in watching her child take pleasure in eating what she had been able to provide.
“Eat slowly. It will taste better, and your stomach will appreciate it.”
Trudy neither slowed nor chewed longer. She finished and raised smiling eyes to Dorothy. “More bread and honey?”
Dorothy nodded.
They cleared the table and put the dishes into the wooden dishpan in the kitchen. All dirty dishes were placed there until after supper, when the two of them would boil the water to fill the dishpan and rinse pan, add the brown soap they had made from ashes and l
ye last fall, and alternate in washing and drying.
Dorothy wasted no time. “Go to my room and fetch the candle wicks we made last fall. They’re in the bottom drawer in the chest of drawers, wrapped in brown paper. Remember?”
Trudy turned on her heel and was gone, while Dorothy pulled a chair to the center of the kitchen floor and stepped up onto it. Wooden pegs were set in the side of the massive, low overhead beams, on which long wooden poles were placed, along with many shorter, thin iron rods. Carefully she reached high to lift down two of the long poles, and eight of the metal rods, and took them outside where she laid them in the grass close to the woodyard while Trudy returned with the bundle of wicks.
“Put them there,” Dorothy said, pointing, and Trudy laid the brown paper bundle on the grass. Together they carried four sawhorses out of the small woodyard to a place near the kettles and arranged them in pairs with the ends touching, one pair facing the other eight feet away, and then laid the two long poles on them, parallel, about four feet apart.
“Good. Now open the bundle of wicks, and I’ll show you how to double them and put them on the rods. It’s time you learned.”
“I’ve watched you before.”
“But you’ve never done it. Watch closely.”
Trudy watched Dorothy open the brown paper, and as Dorothy reached for the first long, thin wick, Trudy was remembering the afternoons the two of them had spent during the previous fall, walking in the open fields and along the roadsides, the banks of the streams around Boston, and past The Neck on the mainland, gathering the silky down from the milkweed that grew in wild abundance. They gathered it in their aprons and put it in sacks to carry home. Dorothy taught her how to gently roll the silky fibers between her hands to start it, and then draw it with one hand while she twisted it with the other into a long thread. When they were finished, they had cut the strands into thirty-six-inch lengths, soaked them for two days in water laced with saltpeter, dried them, and carefully wrapped them for their spring candlemaking.