Becoming Americans

by Donald Batchelor

  "It was the hoops…" Richard started to explain.

  "I'll sell you!" Harper shouted. "I'll beat you to near death, or I'll sell you!"

  "Father…." Edward tried.

  "Your Uncle Edward Williams will hear of this! Do you realize how much time will be added to your indenture to repay me for the costs of this deed? You'll be swinging my broad ax for the rest of your life! Vain and arrogant. Evil! The Devil is in you, Boy."

  Harper's open hand slammed against Richard's head, then hit again. Richard held his breath. He'd not known such fury could come from Francis Harper. He made no attempt to defend himself, to point out that this seeming destruction was, indeed, a blessing for Mister Ware.

  "Go to your sleeping cabin! You will be summoned."

  Richard returned, and waited in the dark, listening to the shouts and laughter from around the roaring, distant, mid-night bonfire.

  "Father will see you now." Edward stood in the doorway. His lighted candle threw deep shadows across his face. His eyes were wide with fear and anticipation.

  Francis Harper and Mister Ware were flanking the parlor fireplace when the boys entered. Harper dismissed his son and Richard stood alone before them. Their faces were drawn tight with the serious situation, and red with the long day's festivities of food and drink.

  "Richard." Harper spoke calmly now. "Mister Ware and I have inspected the damage you inflicted on his property. It is serious and you will be punished accordingly. It falls to me to make good the damage. The court will add that to your contract of indenture. At Mister Ware's suggestion, I have decided to allow the vestry to decide your punishment. You will face them after the All Saints' Day service tomorrow. And, Boy, best begin your prayers this night, for you will be in agony tomorrow night."

  Richard remembered Harper's rage and he remembered the beatings he had witnessed when his apprentice friends had angered their masters.

  Mister Ware spoke now.

  "It puzzles me, Boy, how you think. God has blessed you with advantages. You were not plucked from the streets, nor from Bridewell hospital, nor the jails of London—like so many of our servants. You come from a meritorious family. God has brought you to this wondrous country of opportunity. I, and my family, have shown you the hospitality and generosity you can expect in this land. You respond to us with a childish prank of willful destruction. I know not how you think. Surely, you do think?"

  "Sir, I do," Richard blurted out. "But I didn't think the hogsheads would…explode tonight. It was consideration of your good that led me to my action! The hogsheads were poorly made, Mister Ware. The staves were green and uneven. The hoops were made of a softwood, not hickory or ash, like they should have been. The hogsheads—and your beautiful tobacco—would have been destroyed before they left the Chesapeake!"

  "Your impudence will only warrant additional punishment!" Anger had returned to Harper's voice.

  "But, Sir, I could not have busted the hoops had they been…."

  "If you had suspicions you could have told Old Ned, or spoken to your master, here." Mr. Ware sounded less angry than curious.

  "There was no one here, and I…" Richard began.

  "And you were drunk, again, with our host's rum?" Harper's anger had returned in force. "You were angered by me sending you from the churchyard, and this was an opportunity for mischief! Don't try deceiving us, Boy! Mister Ware would not have slack coopers!" Harper stepped forward and boxed Richard's ears.

  Richard did not protest. He waited silently as the ringing in his ears subsided.

  "How do you know to say this about my casks, Boy?" Mister Ware asked calmly.

  "Most of my days, before coming to Virginia, were spent with my friend who is apprenticed to a cooper. I couldn't help but learn some basic things. And when my sleeve caught on a hoop, and I looked closer at the hogsheads, it was obvious that they wouldn't hold. I was amazed that on such a grand plantation as yours, Sir, that such workmanship would be allowed." Mr. Ware needed to know that his was the real responsibility for the shoddy casks. It was Ware's tobacco in Ware's hogsheads!

  Harper boxed his ears again.

  "How dare you criticize our host!"

  "Enough for this evening, Harper," Mr. Ware said. "We will pursue the matter in the morning light."

  "Return to your quarters," Harper said.

  Richard stumbled back to his dark cabin and sat on the bed. He replaced his suit in the chest, then went to the corner and felt for Old Ned's jug of rum. It was gone, no doubt, to the fireside revelry; being passed around.

  A fusillade of muskets and other firing guns exploded, frightening away the evil spirits that the Devil loosed on this night. Richard feared for the morrow.

  He undressed and knelt by the bed. His prayers were long and earnest. When he'd finished, he felt for his rabbit's foot and climbed into the bed.

  A crowing rooster brought him back. Old Ned was snoring, but the third bed was empty. The morning had arrived so quickly!

  What would he do? How could be he prepared? He must make a plan.

  Penitent and innocent. Both. Penitent and innocent. That's what he'd show them. And that's how he felt. He'd apologize for not reporting the stretched and splitting hoops instead of breaking them. He'd apologize for getting drunk. And he'd tell Francis Harper about the suit; that it was Uncle Edward's parting gift. He'd admit to vanity—he'd admit to that—but he'd not intended to embarrass Harper. He'd look humble, wearing his work breeches. He'd….

  His clothes weren't on the floor where he dropped them when he'd undressed. He looked about the dimly lighted room and knew that they were missing. He scampered to the chest and opened it to find only his fine blue suit and linen shirt.

  Someone had stolen or hidden his clothes. A trick, to make him wear the new suit again today. To force him into renewed embarrassment and shame at a time when humility was called for. It would look like defiance!

  Old Ned turned in his bed. A rooster lets no one sleep. Old Ned muttered and coughed the cough of one who'd concentrated on pipe and tankard for most of two days and nights.

  "Old Ned! My clothes! Where are they? I'm sorry I drank from your rum, but I need my breeches and shirt. Old Ned!"

  The old man opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them again. He made no sign of understanding what the problem was.

  "Damn you, Boy, for waking me. I'm not to speak with you. Only to say that I'm to take you to church myself. And damn you for that." Old Ned rolled back over.

  Richard lay back on his bed. Maybe, if he hadn't fought so much with his cousins, Uncle Edward wouldn't have sent him to this place.

  No! He'd wanted to come. He was glad to be in Virginia! Yesterday's dream might be gone, but he'd soon have another.

  Edward stepped into the cabin. Surprising Richard, Edward looked stern, and he spoke in a loud voice. "Father says for you to fetch Old Ned's breakfast, and for you to row the boat to church yourself." He shut the door behind himself, turning back into the morning haze.

  Richard dressed hurriedly in his blue breeches and doublet and tied the ribbons of his shoes. He ran to the kitchen cabin where female servants lived who fed the single men. He was given tankards of ale and a piece of corn pone for himself and Old Ned. Ale splashed on his linen cuffs as he rushed back to the cabin.

  He silently offered the ale and bread to the man. But then, he had to speak.

  "I didn't do it, you know, Old Ned. Not like it looks, I didn't."

  The man tipped his tankard.

  "Was there a good bonfire, then?" Richard asked. "Were there games of chance?"

  Old Ned chewed the pone and looked away.

  "Aye, we're betting on the number of lashes you'll receive," he said.

  Richard left the cabin and went to the river's edge. He must prepare himself to go through this with dignity. He could at least do that, he thought.

  The tide was going out as he rowed against it, upstream to church. God was starting the punishment early.

  They were amon
g the very first arriving to the churchyard, and Old Ned told him that he was to proceed inside and take his place at the rear of the church. He would be alone with God to consider his sins, and he would forego the social aspects of the day.

  The church was dark and damp. Oiled-paper windows let in very little light, and the dirt floor, though protected from the rain, was dank and pitted with wormholes. He heard mice chewing on a bench. A black snake slithered underneath the wall.

  He tried to be remorseful. He remembered the words he'd heard all his life; that God was good, that God was love. Yet, all he'd seen of God's influence in life's daily affairs and the workings of men's minds and actions still left him wondering. What had he done to warrant the treatment he was about to receive? Was God so angry about the blue suit? Or, was it the rum he took? Or, maybe that he hadn't told someone about the brads? God had no sense of humor, he did know that.

  Gathering voices outside talked about the night before. Men compared stories of the tricks they'd pulled, or of the wenches they'd been with, or of how their heads had never ached so badly. He heard the rumor of a visiting servant to the Ware plantation who had broken into Ware's house to steal his good wine then had destroyed Ware's entire tobacco crop, all casked and weighed for shipping.

  The church door opened and Richard fell to his knees, assuming the posture of penitence and supplication. As the parishioners entered the sanctuary he modestly returned to his seat, looking downward but towards the aisle. He was the subject of muttered comments and giggles as the benches were filled by people returning to the seats they'd held the day before.

  Anne Biggs entered with her grandfather and grandmother and with Francis and Edward Harper. No one seemed to notice him, and Richard was relieved to be spared the looks of recrimination, especially from Anne.

  The minister entered in procession and began the service. Soon there were muffled snores about the room. Two babies cried, awaiting their baptismal services. Richard's thoughts lamented his own fate except when his eyes drifted to Anne and her family.

  For the first time he noticed a stranger sitting on the bench with the Ware family and the Harpers. He was an old man for Virginia, maybe fifty. His clothes were fine and expensive, though dated. His doublet was high-waisted and tied with a wide sash; the sleeves were deeply slashed for a protruding shirt. Richard could see long, narrow breeches—far below the knees— that were fastened with visible buttons. His collar and his cuffs were edged with plain lace. Strangest of all, the man looked oddly familiar. So much so, that Richard's attention was briefly diverted from Anne and his own problems.

  "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came they?"

  The minister read the Epistle of All Saints' Day and Richard again became self-conscious of his suit.

  "Who is the boy arrayed in the blue suit? And whence came he?" Richard knew what they were thinking. He caught a side-glance from Anne, and he thought he saw his friend Edward smiling.

  The services were brief. The congregation and the minister shared the morning-after pain, and Reverend Cole was eager to anoint the babes and collect his fees in rich, sweet-scented pounds.

  The procession left the church. The congregation again filed out as Richard felt their stares. He waited until Francis Harper came and led him in silence to a row of men seated on a bench beneath an ancient, spreading oak. The minister and Mister Ware sat with three other men, one of them the stranger Richard had noticed with the family. He knew these men were of the vestry and they were waiting to consider his actions and to decide his fate.

  Harper was the first to speak. His shame for the misdeeds of his servant was profound. His shame was doubled, he told the men, for he bore the humiliation that his wife—God rest her soul—would have felt. She, in whose memory the Reverend Cole would offer words on the morrow, All Souls' Day.

  "May she rest in peace," said the minister.

  "God rest her," said Mister Ware.

  "God rest her soul," said Richard.

  "My servant has done grievous damage to the fortune of Mister Ware, to whom we are so greatly indebted."

  Francis Harper was interrupted.

  "The facts are these, gentlemen and Reverend Cole," Mister Ware began. "Upon returning from our day of worship and communion yesterday, we found the lad—drunk to the gills with rum—beside some broken hogsheads of my sweetscented. Hoop brads had been sundered, and the casks expelled their contents onto the floor of my shed."

  "The brads were faulty!" Richard surprised himself with his explosive selfdefense.

  "Quiet, Boy!" said Reverend Cole. "And how came you to be wearing such apparel? Your arrogance and your vanity are condemnatory in themselves!"

  "He came by both traits honestly." The stranger with Mister Ware spoke. "They were traits of his father."

  "Sir!" Richard protested with shock and heat. He crossed himself and reached for his rabbit's foot. The odd familiarity of the stranger was frightening.

  "As was the trait of honesty," the man went on. "His father and his father's brothers cling to honesty with a pride so fierce it begs forgiveness from Our Lord."

  "We know that to be so of you, Mister Williams," the minister said.

  "The boy is my nephew," John Williams said.

  Mister Ware regained the men's attention.

  "At the request of my honored friend, Mister John Williams, I have investigated the situation and have satisfied myself that the boy spoke truth. The hogsheads yet to be pressed are weak. That was clear on close inspection. The boy was right; my entire crop would have been lost. I am in his debt."

  Richard looked at the man who was his Uncle John. Uncle Edward had spoken of an estranged brother who had left for Saint Christopher Island in the Indies when Richard's father was still a boy. An Uncle John who—if alive—now lived in the Virginia colony. The brothers had argued over some religious fine points during the reign of the late King Charles. The name, John Williams, was now rarely spoken in the Bristol household.

  Cade Ware continued.

  "Intemperance in the heat felled my cooper in July. His new apprentice was left to complete the casks begun. Your boy, here, was right, too, with his impertinent implication that the fault was mine for not insuring…."

  "The boy is impertinent," Harper repeated.

  "Vanity and arrogance," Reverend Cole repeated himself.

  "He saved my crop and will be rewarded." Mister Ware made it clear that the discussion had ended.

  "Sir, my reward would be your forgiveness of my arrogance and impertinence," Richard said to Mister Ware. He turned to Harper.

  "And if you could forgive my seeming vanity in apparel. It was the suit my Uncle Edward gave me for church functions…."

  "And to advertise his wealth, no doubt," John Williams added. "My brother has never been ashamed to show his wealth." He smoothed the fabric of his old, high-waisted suit.

  Richard turned and took his uncle's hand as he knelt before him.

  "My dear Uncle. God has rewarded me with you, even in my sinful state."

  The old man's eyes misted and he pulled Richard up, embracing him.

  "You are a gift from God to me, my boy. You're the image of my youngest brother when I saw him last."

  Richard stood there within the arms of his uncle, stunned by his turn of fate. His future was assured.

  Chapter Four

  On the Monday before Christmas, Harper installed his family in the new manor house. Work had finished the previous Thursday but, to avoid the bad luck of moving into a new house on Friday, and since moving-in on a Saturday foreordained a short stay, Monday was the beginning of their settled life.

  It was a fine house, built on cedar pilings, with a broad brick chimney and, as Harper had promised his wife, a wooden floor. There was a sleeping loft for Evelyn and Drusilla. Two windows of scraped horn let in the earliest morning light as the sun rose from the bay. Two more shuttered windows in the back opened onto a space
for flowers and a sweet shrub that Drusilla promised would flood the house with its aroma in the spring.

  Time moved swiftly at Pine Haven as Harper and his settlement fell into the rhythm of plantation life that moved with the rhythm of the seasons.

  They had cleared and burned in December. In January, they seeded the beds, following the basic system taught to them by their gregarious neighbor, Brinson Barnes. Barnes had learned the fashion of raising tobacco from Opeechcot, himself. Now Barnes and his wife enjoyed their role as teachers on frequent visits to the Harper plantation, while instilling in the newcomers an appreciation of neighborliness and of hospitality.

  Tiny tobacco seeds were sewn in softened earth and covered with protecting straw. As the seed sprouted and grew to the height of three or four inches, the men, and sometimes Drusilla, prepared the hills for the planting. Each worker hoed circles of arm's length while standing in the middle. When dirt was pulled up around one foot to about the knee, the man stepped out and patted the top flat with his hoe, then moved on about three feet—or around the stump—to begin a new hill.