Cape Cod

by William Martin

Slam. He was out the door with the list in his pocket and two more futures in his hands.

  And he had the feeling that the list might determine the futures… of a lot of people. He memorized it and made two copies. One he gave over the phone to Ma Little and told her to give it to Jimmy. The other he took to George’s dune shack, but George wasn’t home. Probably out wandering with his new summer friend, the one he said was named Dave. So Geoff left the list in an envelope with a note: “Think about this, but don’t tell anyone.”

  iv.

  Janice was back in Barnstable, in the 1700 house. Her grandmother lived on the second floor, and there were law offices on the first floor, as there had been for most of the eighteenth century.

  Hiram Bigelow kept his main offices in Boston, but he’d been hanging a Bigelow, Holden, and Hoar shingle here all his life. He looked over his reading glasses at Janice. “Why do you want to know about community property?”

  She watched the cars passing the little oval of grass on 6A, the old town green. “I just want to know.”

  “Have you talked with anyone about this?” Hiram was a year younger than Dickerson, but had developed a completely different persona. Where Dickerson was bombastic, Hiram was subtle, where Dickerson played his bulk, Hiram folded a slender frame into a seersucker suit and folded the suit into a leather chair. Where Dickerson was smart, Hiram preferred to be wise. “You really should talk with someone, Janice.”

  “I’m talking with you, Hiram.”

  “About the wrong thing. One of the problems of your generation is that you run at the first sign of trouble.”

  “I’d like to get Geoff’s attention.” She went to a window and looked out. “We’re getting ready to fight the town Conservation Commission and then the Cape Cod Commission tooth and nail—”

  “To build ourselves the security our land entitles us to.”

  “Right. But my husband is thinking about killing the development before we even start.”

  “I’m a firm believer in using what God gives us.” He leaned back in his chair and made a little tent with his fingers. “Unfortunately he gave us consciences, and your husband’s seems to be working overtime.”

  She watched the traffic on 6A. During the summer, it flowed like a stream, sometimes rushing fast, sometimes meandering, but always running, like questions she could not hold back. “What are my rights if… if something should happen?”

  He laughed, as though the possibility was too much to consider. “You’re joint tenants. Unless otherwise stipulated, whatever he inherits becomes community property… provided you don’t leave him before the estate clears probate.”

  “What’s his is mine, what’s mine is his?”

  “Your Pilgrim ancestors would have said that you were his. That was before we had divorce lawyers.”

  She wasn’t sure what she’d do with that knowledge, but she was glad to know. Now there was something else. God gave us all consciences, and hers had not been treating her well. “Tell me, Hiram. Is a handwritten will legal?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She clutched at her purse as though she thought Clara’s will might come flying out. For a moment, the future of the whole project was in her hands as much as Geoff’s.

  “But in Massachusetts a will has to be witnessed by two people,” Hiram added.

  Good. Clara’s will was invalid. But what would old Hannah Bigelow have said about a young woman who carried someone’s last bequest in her purse and did nothing about it?

  On her way upstairs, she stopped to look at Hannah, painted rather primitively in the 1790s by some local portraitist. Hannah was wearing a yellow dress, her hair was simple and severe, and her brown eyes stared like beacons across the centuries. The only resemblance Janice saw to herself was in the stiff spine. The old girl had backbone….

  She had long ago read Hannah’s letters and wanted to read them again, just to remind herself of backbone—especially when dealing with Hilyard men.

  Agnes Bigelow looked up from the pile of papers on her lap. “I went across to the Sturgis Library and got Hannah’s letters. They keep them so well over there, and they’re so nice. Not like the snoops from Old Comers.”

  Janice brushed her lips across the fuzz on her grandmother’s cheek. Agnes was eighty-nine, with no more than a hunchback slowing her down. No sad smell of urine, no cranky old temper, no memory loss. That was why Janice was happy to leave her children in the old woman’s care.

  “Letters from Sam Hilyard to Hannah, from Eldredge Dickerson to Hannah, a few that Hannah wrote and never sent, or maybe copied and sent.”

  Janice hefted the pile. “A lost art, correspondence.”

  “They are art. You’ve read them before, but come back to them again and they’ll give you new insights, like great books.”

  Janice picked up the first one; it came from Sam Hilyard.

  June 18, 1784

  Dear Hannah,

  Word reaches me that you have wed. This saddens me, as I always hoped to sail your way, but the winds do blow contrary. I wish you and John Digby best wishes, and as a patriot, will welcome you back to the new nation whenever you choose to come.

  CHAPTER 24

  May 1793

  The Story of Hannah and Sam

  Sam Hilyard reread Hannah’s answer nearly ten years later, when word arrived that John Digby had gone down off Hatteras and Hannah was coming home. He had saved the letter that long.

  Dear Sam,

  Thank you for your kind thoughts. We cannot return, in that my husband’s family embraced the Loyalist cause with great passion. I shall always miss Cape Cod, but Nova Scotia is my home now. May our ships sail always on friendly seas, each with its own special mate.

  Sam hoped that by now she had changed her mind.

  He mastered a big-bellied draft horse out of Boston called the James Otis. For crew, he counted on his brother Will, Charlie Kwennit, who had survived the Revolution, and Mr. Barmy Burt, who found the sea a greater inspiration than William Thayer’s doctoring. For love, he counted on women in Boston, London, and Jamaica, but as he reached age thirty, he had come to realize that his only true legacy might be the children he left behind.

  It was thought that Hannah Bigelow, after a childless decade with John Digby, might be barren. But Sam decided to write to her nevertheless.

  Dear Hannah,

  As I have been at sea these last six months, I could not express my sympathy personally, and I would not now interrupt your grieving. They say John Digby was a good man. To win you, he must have been. But as your heart heals, you must look to the future. It is the only direction our wind will take us. We must follow it or founder. Should you need anything that I can offer, I will stand at your service.

  A week later, on the day he was due to ship for Jamaica with a cargo of rum, her answer arrived in Boston.

  Dear Sam,

  Many thanks for your kind thoughts. I am most happy to be back at Cape Cod, and I agree that we must take the future at full canvas. Be assured that when I have strength, I will raise my sail again. And we will again sail on the same seas. But it may be a long time before I think of sharing another quarterdeck, so don’t stay in port for me.

  ii.

  From the last will and testament of Benjamin Bigelow: “And to my niece Hannah, I bequeath the whole of that certain property known as Jack’s Island, including the surrounding marsh, all buildings thereon, and saltworks. It is my confidence that she will make good use of the land. In a world where power passes from father to son, a childless uncle is happy to make his bequest to a trusted niece….”

  Hannah told her driver to stop on the causeway so that she could admire her island.

  “You’ll have all the help that your father can give.” Sitting beside her was Solomon, now sixty-two and completely gray, though still ramrod-straight and as querulous as an old gull.

  “Thank you, Father,” answered Hannah, “but I intend to conduct my affairs here on my own, so that you may learn confidenc
e in me for the future.”

  Jack’s Island was now a spring-green meadow from one creek to the other. But when the wind blew, few tall trees waved in the sky. Instead, the sails of the windmills spun above the saltworks.

  The first settlers on the Cape had found that boiling a kettle of seawater would effectively render salt. In a place where wood was abundant, this was the cheapest route to profit. But the sea was endless and the woods were not, and in time, firewood for boiling the seawater grew more expensive than the salt.

  Yet Cape Codders were ingenious people where a dollar could be made from the elements. They built vats, some a hundred feet long and ten feet wide, though no more than a foot deep, then fitted them with shutters that could be closed in rainy weather, and let the sun evaporate seawater into salt. Five thousand feet of saltworks now lined Jack’s Creek and Nauseiput, and as the sun gained strength each May, spindly-legged windmills began pumping water into the vats.

  “Fine saltmakin’ weather.” Jacob Bigelow, the youngest of Shearjashub’s sons, welcomed them to the island. He had retired from the sea to run the saltworks, but everyone still called him Cap’n Jake.

  “A fine saltmakin’ crew,” said Solomon.

  Scrooby Doone and Leyden were out among the vats, opening the shutters so the morning sun could begin its work. When they saw Hannah, they came running.

  “We heard the news, Miss Hannah, ’bout you inheritin’—”

  “I’m Widow Digby now, Scrooby,” she said gently.

  “That means she husband’s kicked the… passed the… he’s dead.” With the shovel that he always carried, Leyden whacked his brother in the seat of the pants. Then he took off his hat and bowed his head to Hannah.

  “I’m very happy to be back, boys.” She patted Leyden on his bald spot, and he gave her a toothless old grin.

  “Scrooby and Leyden know almost as much about the windmills as I do,” said Jacob.

  Scrooby pulled off his hat and bowed to the ground. “And I know more than Leyden.”

  “You see,” said Solomon, “your land is in good hands.”

  “I intend to learn how salt is made, Father, and how the windmills run.”

  “I can teach you that good enough,” said Cap’n Jake, “but it’s like learnin’ how to sail. You gotta know how to make canvas and wind do your biddin’.”

  “She needs to learn only how to find herself another husband,” said Solomon. “One who can give her children.”

  “I need also to learn what my father and brother do at Barnstable, so that I can do it as well.” Hannah offered her arms to the Doone brothers. “Gentlemen, a tour of the salt-works, if you please.”

  Scrooby and Leyden looked at her arms as though they were sleeping snakes; then they looked at each other. So Hannah took one of Scrooby’s arms and hooked it into her own.

  Scrooby beamed at Hannah and scowled at his brother. “Take she other arm, damn fool. Ain’t no one ever taught you how to treat a lady?”

  As the Doone brothers led Hannah toward the vats and windmills that spread out across the yellow sand, she announced, “It’s a new era, Father.”

  “A new era for men of vision,” muttered Solomon, “not for young widows who should be keeping house.”

  iii.

  A new era, indeed. Those who lived through the time between the closing of the Barnstable Court and Washington’s inauguration had seen Benjamin Bigelow’s prophecies on independence fulfilled. Most of those not impoverished by blockade and rebellion were bled white by what followed. The British closed their ports to American shipping, and while a loose confederation of states, with little foreign credit, struggled to organize itself, the system of national currency remained in a shambles.

  But on Cape Cod, those who held land could raise cattle or corn. Those who had hooks could fish. And even in bad times, there were shipmasters and speculators who could smell change in the wind before it blew over the horizon. By 1793, the bravery of the shipmasters and the money of the speculators were bringing prosperity. And it would soon be said that most Cape mariners knew the sea route to China better than the land route to Boston.

  One of the most respected mariners was a small and precise Barnstable man named Eldredge Dickerson. He mastered the merchantman Benjamin Bigelow, owned by a family whose speculations had brought income in even the hardest days. Upon his return from a China run, he learned that the Widow Digby had moved to Jack’s Island. With her father’s permission, he courted her.

  Upon return from an Indies run, Sam Hilyard learned that the Widow Digby was receiving suitors. With no one’s permission, he courted her, bringing both flowers and a schooner laden with lumber.

  Hannah was pleased by the flowers, curious about the schooner, and surprised by the appearance of a man she had often imagined since girlhood. Compared to Eldredge Dickerson’s condensed and careful presence, Sam seemed brawny and a bit wild. He wore the loose-fitting clothes of a sailor, a straw hat instead of felt, and shoulder-long hair he had never powdered or tied in his life.

  Sam had courted many beautiful women and some not so beautiful, but he had never before courted one fresh from the strawberry field. A sun hat shaded most of Hannah’s face, the handle of a small trowel hung from a pocket in her apron, a film of perspiration beaded on her upper lip, and she looked as handsome to Sam as his first memories of her.

  She smelled the irises and poppies, which had little scent, and out of politeness said they smelled beautiful. Then she invited him to the house for tea. They strolled along the path from the Nauseiput dock through the cornfield, where the scarecrows stood sentinel over the crows, toward the forlorn grove of trees that protected the house. Jack’s Island now looked like a table in the midst of marshland and flat, something God had forgotten to carry away when he made the coastline.

  “Your uncle gave you a great gift.”

  “A great responsibility as well. We have much to do here”—she held out her hands, tanned brown and callused—“though the sun may leave me looking like an old fisherman.”

  He bent down slightly to look under the brim of her hat. “Little chance of that, Widow Digby.”

  “You’ve grown more skilled in seventeen years, Sam.”

  For a moment, he thought he might kiss her, as he had done so clumsily that night in 1776. But it was true. He had grown more skilled in his dealings with women. After all, he had paid enough of them to learn. Still, for all his careful charting of this conversation, he ran himself straight onto the rocks of bluntness: “Did Eldredge ask for your hand?”

  “I thought you came here to flatter me, Sam… then sell me a boatload of lumber.”

  “They say you live in a hundred-forty-year-old fallin’-down house. The lumber’s a gift.”

  She had known that they would come when her mourning was over—the widowers, the bachelors, the seafarers who had come to realize that while they were at sea, all the women had married and their youth had fled. Who among them wouldn’t take a chance with Hannah, widowed young as she was, childless, and blessed with a fine inheritance?

  The Reverend Mr. Kite of Barnstable, a middle-aged widower with an odd eye and a penchant for quoting Scripture, had paid her an inordinate amount of attention. James Stubbs, a young fisherman, brought her halibut and cod after every voyage. And Eldredge Dickerson had already made his intentions known to her father.

  Eldredge had the best chance. He was an honorable man, a churchgoer, and as a China trader he was gone for years at a time. That was to the good, because Hannah had plans for which a man would be nothing more than a nay-saying hindrance. But here was Sam Hilyard, looking as nervous and unpredictable as the boy who had enticed her so long ago.

  She let him into her house, the first of her suitors she had so honored. “It was built by one of your ancestors. It’s very old.”

  “Very old post and beam.” He pulled out his knife and probed a corner post, working downward until the knife slipped easily into the wood. Scores of slimy white bugs slithered
out and fell to the floor. “Very old post and beam, very new termites.”

  He said nothing of the wing chairs beside the fireplace, but he stuck his head up the flue and said it probably hadn’t been pointed since it was built. He did not notice the red curtains on the windows, but told her how small seventeenth-century windows were and how much more efficient was the double-hung design. He did not notice his flowers in a vase on the great room table, but banged his head on the door frame leading to the sitting room.

  She tucked her hands into the pockets of her apron. “You’re too big, Sam.”

  “The house is too small. Let me build you another one.”

  “I’m happy here where I am.”

  Her resistance was something he had prepared for, but he had not foreseen the midday silence, the quiet intimacy made closer by the distant crump of the waves. So he sought another blunt question from the course he had charted before coming. “Why did you marry John Digby?”

  “I loved him.” She threw open the back door. Out beyond the barn, windmills turned in the breeze. Ocean and sky made their pact at the horizon.

  “Did you ever think of me in Halifax?”

  “I saw your ship. I saw the bloodstains. I cried… for us all.”

  He stood behind her. She had taken off her sun hat and shaken out her hair, and the smell of her intoxicated him. “The British took us right out there. They came out of these creeks in longboats.”

  “We had to grow up quickly.” She stepped away and went toward the barn. It was said that Quakers had met there during the persecutions, and she was often drawn to it, as if she could summon her own strength by contemplating theirs, and at the moment, she needed her strength.

  But Sam followed her. “Sell me this land and let me build you a new house.”

  She stopped at the barn door. “Sell you the land?”

  “Sell me half the island. I’ll pay whatever you wish and build you a house wherever you want… a barn as well.”