Becoming Americans

by Donald Batchelor

  Anne was awakened by her husband when he crawled into the bed. She opened her eyes to see a face etched with scratches, but wearing a big grin. He silently moved a sweaty hand to her breast as the boys climbed to their sleeping places in the loft. She moved his hand and turned over on her side.

  "Go to sleep," she whispered fiercely. She was in no mood for such antics. An eagle had carried off her-best laying hen that afternoon, and a whole litter of pigs had been killed by wolves last night. The house was crowded and in need of repair. He might better attend to business at home before he went off on rescue adventures for thieves and heretics.

  Sarah Alice stirred and whimpered in her sleep. Anne removed Richard's arm from around her waist and got out of the bed to soothe the child. She wondered how and when her love for Richard had gone. No, not gone, but changed, she thought. It was, more and more, becoming like the love she had for her children.

  Chapter Eleven

  On a sunny morning in May 1682, Anne was still pondering that question. Richard wasn't growing up; he was just an older child. His drinking and his gambling and his wenching were just games for an older child.

  Sixteen years earlier, when she was a mere girl herself, coming and going in consciousness during the labor of her first-born, hearing prayers around her bedside, and boisterous drinking in the hall-room, she'd decided that life should be more than the religious ardor of her father and her grandparents, and much more than the life of irresponsibility and revelry she already saw as her new husband's future. Since then, her children had been loved and protected, but she'd increased her expectations and demands for them—and for herself. She made certain that her children learned what others had done before them in Virginia. It was still new country, but not so new as when she'd been born, among the first of the New World's English children.

  Norfolk Town was being built just downriver, at the mouth of the Eastern Branch. Roads were connecting counties, and there was talk of Lower Norfolk being divided, like Lancaster and other counties up the Bay had been. There would come a time when the English in Virginia would make real contributions to the empire, and her children would be among those Englishmen.

  Tomorrow, John would take his place among the men when, for the first time, he participated in the yearly General Muster. John had gone with his father to last year's General Muster, and had watched the men at most of the monthly drills, but tomorrow he officially became a man; declared a tax-paying tithable, and man enough to be part of the militia.

  Anne was already proud of John. She was proud of all her children, of course, but John—her first-born—had shown his promise from the beginning. Even the year of his birth, 1666, had been among the most bounteous years of the colony. His life—like her own and those of all the children—had never known a day of hunger or fear for life. She was never hesitant to remind her children of that fact, and of the duties they owed to their ancestors and descendants.

  At times, Anne worried for England. After the maligned Governor Berkeley left Virginia following the troubles with Bacon, the King was often mis-advised, and he appointed governors who appointed Councils that acted, seemingly, more in their own behalves than in that of King and country. Grandfather Ware's confiscated lands were never returned to his estate, nor those of many whom were loyal to the King's governor. Attempts to control tobacco production were, seemingly, abandoned, and this year's crop was reported to be by far the largest ever. Prices would fall to nothing and the planters would fall deeper and deeper into debt to their London and Bristol factors.

  Anne missed the musky aroma of dried, casked tobacco that mingled with the scents of summer and fall flowers. That smell was gone from their Deep Creek plantation. Even Richard's newest land was sapped of its strength for growing tobacco. Anne, with Lucy, the one, surly female servant still indentured, and with Edy, and little Richard and Edward, grew vegetables for the family. Richard and John and Joseph supplied the game and brought in the loose-ranging cattle and pigs from the edges of the swamp for slaughter. They could eat well from their land, but there was no fortune to be made growing corn or squash or peas.

  Richard's skill as a cooper had kept them going. He sold some tar and shingles to Captain Ingolbreitsen for Barbados trade, but his hogsheads and pipes were sold as fast as he could craft them. John and Joseph sometimes let-show their disdain of the work, and John was even more disdainful of his father's trading. John would be a planter, he insisted, though he knew full well that he couldn't do it on Deep Creek. Joseph loved to travel with his father, though, listening to him barter with the people who so badly needed what he purchased from ships that anchored in their Southern Branch. But Richard wasn't trading this year. Again prodded by his mentor, Captain Ingolbreitsen, Richard had seized upon the idea of getting something in the easiest way.

  The water that slowly drained from the Dismal Swamp to their Deep Creek was extraordinary in its ability to stay fresh for long periods of time, perfect for those long trans-Atlantic crossings when even beer and ale were bad—if any remained—by the end of the trip. The wood for staves was free, the dark water was free, and Richard knew the craft and had the tools for making pipes. This year's tobacco convoy would be enormous. The need for fresh water would be enormous. The convoy, next year, would be as large. Much of this year's crop would have to be warehoused until then. That gave Richard plenty of time to amass sufficient pipes to fill as they were needed.

  But even easier, was just selling the pipe staves to the sugar and molasses planters in Barbados in exchange for goods that he could trade in Carolina! All he had to do was make the staves from free wood!

  Anne was quick to grasp the potential of the enterprise as she listened to the Captain talk with Richard. If only the baby Richard, were older. Just seven years old, he was already a useful apprentice to his father. Anne wasn't worried about that child's future.

  The older boys worked with George Dawes and the slave, Augustus, making staves and tar and, sometimes, shingles. Richard fretted that they weren't working fast enough; weren't making enough staves and tar to keep up with his production. He turned to men in the swamp for cheap labor.

  Escaped servants and slaves, criminals and madmen found their ways into the swamp and survived on nature's bounty. Their want for cloth, or gunpowder and guns, or for rum, or sugar moved them into contact with settlers like Richard Williams, who lived between the wilderness and civilization. Planters could direct the Constable to their lairs, or they could exploit the needs of these wilderness men. Richard wanted cheap, plentiful pipe staves. He traded his potent and delicious apple brandy to the swamp-men, and watched his stack of staves grow tall.

  As Anne poured the last of her myrtle-wax into the candle mold, she realized that shadow had passed the noon-mark on the door's threshold. She told Sarah Alice to put away her mending and to fetch the men and boys. Work was over for the today. They had preparations to make for tomorrow's General Muster, and there would be time for celebration of John's new status.

  John and Joseph had already stopped working. They were kneeling by a hill of ants—vermin in which they shared a great interest.

  "They must have a tongue that we can't hear," Joseph said.

  "They do that, for sure," John agreed. "You see how one tells another something, and then that one runs back home to tell the others? And then they all come to aid the group. It's a model God gave for us to follow. Do your job and work together for the good of all. That's the way the militia works. Should work. Every soldier is an ant, working in a group as if the whole were just one person. Every soldier turning at the same time; loading, and firing his gun in the one retort; the cannoniers cleaning, loading, and firing so rapidly and so nicely that they might be just one engine."

  "Like the way Pa and George make the hogsheads, and pipes, and tar, and shingles!" Joseph said.

  "What? If anyone is not an ant, it's Father. You see Pa and his friends in the militia. Tripping over each other, drunk. Can you think of any of them running to do s
omeone else's bidding? Of them doing anything that they're not to get some gain from?"

  John loved his father, but he'd heard his mother—and many of the young men he knew—say that the future of Virginia would blossom when the people of the colony worked together for their common good. John's father and the other old men were concerned only with how they could better their own positions, no matter what the penalty to others. He'd seen his father deal with thieves and cutthroats, he'd heard stories from his father that made him even doubt his father's loyalty to the King's Government in Virginia.

  Sarah Alice spoke face-to-face to her kneeling brothers.

  "Come to the house, Ma says. It's time to eat and she's made you a pudding, John." That was supposed to be a surprise, but Sarah Alice couldn't hold it in.

  "We're coming," Joseph said, and John and he gathered their tools and carried them back to their storage place in the shed with the staves and tar.

  Anne and Lucy placed a bird on Richard's trencher for him to have alone, John and Joseph shared one, Edy and Sarah Alice shared another, and little Richard and Edward had one to fight over. Edward usually ended up with what his younger, but stronger, brother didn't want. Anne intervened between the two youngest boys when Richard was too rough for the more delicate Edward, but she couldn't always be there, and—in this world—a man had to learn as a child how to get and keep his own.

  Keep his own.

  She slammed the trencher on the table in front of her husband. He looked up and raised an eyebrow at her little outburst. Juice from the bird had splashed onto his shirt.

  "Your mother seems to have strained herself in preparation of your birthday feast, Son," he said to John.

  Anne was silent. She hesitated to defend herself before the children, as Richard always took that as cause to preach of thankless women, the cause of man's fall from God's grace.

  "I never tire of working for my children," she said, demurely. "No matter what earthly goods and possessions we might lose, there is the infinitely more precious blessing of our offspring."

  Three hundred acres of land, he'd lost to Matthew Caswell! On one horse race! The proceeds from selling those three hundred acres could have bought them more servants, or a strong slave. Augustus was the only slave they'd kept alive when the flux had swept through last year. Richard could have added onto the house that was so crowded and dilapidated. Anne was ashamed to entertain in this falling-down house. How would they afford a wedding and dowry for Edy? Her precious and beautiful daughter had only weeks ago started her life as a woman. Anne was as shocked as the child, but accepted now, that the child could be married within a year. Within a year, the child might be married!

  But not in this hovel.

  "We had a lovely home when you were a baby, John." She stood behind his place at the table, one hand on his shoulder, the other caressing the long locks that were so like his father's.

  "But God saw fit to take that from us, and replace it with another wonderful son." She reached one hand over to smooth the tangled mass of Joseph's hair.

  Joseph winced. Somehow, he always felt guilty when his mother said things like that, as if his birth had brought about the calamities of 1667.

  "And now my first baby's a man. A tithable. A militiaman. In a few years, a parent, himself. And he'll provide a fine home for his family. I'm sure of that."

  Anne turned and went to the bubbling pot to dip and strain her vegetables for the table.

  "You've been practicing, have you, John? And not wasting powder?" Richard had let his wife have her little run-on-at-the-mouth.

  "You know I don't waste powder, Pa," John said, grinning. He was the best shot around; better than his father was, better than anyone he knew. He was anxious to get to General Muster tomorrow and show off his skill. Maybe the Boush boys would notice and demand that he be put in their company.

  "John hits it every time," Sarah Alice boasted of her brother. She worshipped her oldest brother. He never tired of her trailing him, and he would attack, with fury, any other of the brothers and sisters if they ever said a cross word to her.

  "Quiet, children, while your father gives thanks for our blessings," Anne said.

  Everyone was silent for Richard's brief and perfunctory prayer, then tore at the juicy roasted birds on the wooden trenchers.

  When the meal was finished, Richard took his oldest son aside and, sharing a bowl of cider and brandy with him, spoke in broad terms of the boy's new responsibilities. As a tithable, John would be expected to labor as hard, and to produce as much, as any servant or slave. Richard admitted to the boy that, in his case, the lesson was unnecessary; John had always been a hard-worker and had been earning for the family for years. Richard figured that the boy, most likely, had already—secretly—put-away enough to start his own life. But, it was Richard's job as a father to tell the boy of his responsibilities. They talked of marriage, and John said that he would wait for two more years before he'd wed Catherine Dean. They spoke of John's future, and the boy assured his father that it would be as he'd always known it would be—he'd be a tobacco planter. Richard shook his head, wondering how the boy would do it, but not doubting that he would. There was the same hard resolve in his boy that he'd had at that age.

  John wanted to talk of tomorrow's General Muster. Richard laughed and promised John that he'd have the time of his life. But that wasn't what concerned him, John said. He wanted to know the personalities and politics of the ranks, whom should he impress for the most rapid advancement.

  It was moments like that when Richard's son actually bored him. He understood John's ambition, his desire to become more comfortable in life, but John's methods of advancement had always been those of accomplishment shoved in the face of a superior.

  "It's the cavalry, what's noticed, my boy," Richard said. "Your good shooting will be noted, but, more and more, it's the man on horseback who gets the glory."

  "Then I must have a fine horse," John said.

  "You've not the wherewithal for a fine horse, and you've not the aptitude for a great horseman. You're a good shot. Be proud of that and look elsewhere for your glory."

  Richard had lost patience. He stood and walked out into the afternoon sun.

  John sat by his musket and cartridge box. He would not cry. He picked up the dowel he used as his former, a triangular piece of paper, a musket ball, and began rolling another cartridge. He could roll a perfect cartridge; one that would fit into his musket and fall home with a mere tap of the stock. Not every man could do that!

  Richard sat in the warm May sunshine by the Creek. He stuffed his long clay pipe with cut tobacco and called to Edward—who was pulling at the tail of his new puppy—to leave the dog alone and to fetch him a coal from the fire. Edward was always thrilled to be singled out by his father, and gladly ran into the house to find the right, glowing ember. He ran back to his father with the tongs clenched in both hands and stood before the big man.

  Richard took the tongs and lit his pipe with the coal, then tossed the coal into the grass, where it sizzled and then died. He handed the tongs back to Edward and said, "Sit here with your Pa, Son." The child sat down with a silent glow of pleasure.

  They sat as Richard smoked, and the boy chewed on a tobacco stem.

  "One day, when things calm down, down there, I'm gonna take you to Carolina, Son. I think that's the place. The good land's not all taken. A man could get a thousand acres and start a kingdom. Just need to get a start. John—and your Ma, neither—don't like this life. Things aren't like they used to be. A man, back then, could start off with a few hundred acres and have a fine plantation. If he got the right land."

  Richard didn't go on. He wasn't going to admit to this sickly boy who worshipped him that he'd been such a fool as to let his blind attraction for the child's mother make him waste his headrights on useless swampland. And then to repeat the mistake by buying more of that same land. And then to lose that in a rigged horserace! But, that was over. He'd get his losses back with the sa
le of this piped swamp-water, and staves, and tar. Then he'd buy headrights and land in Albemarle. There was no better land in Virginia than what lay by the broad Chowan River in Albemarle. There he could be the planter he'd meant to be. There, John and his other sons could be proud leaders in a colony that would— one day—come of age, like Virginia. It couldn't be, here in Deep Creek. Sons of a man who sold swamp-water, and smelled of tar and smoke would never be accepted by the Byrds and the Thorowgoods and the other families that were becoming Virginia's aristocracy. Many of these very people had come to Virginia with no more than Richard had—less even!—and now their plantations—once no larger than his own—were growing to the size of English counties! Because they had tobacco! Richard would make his quick deals with the water, then trade it for a new beginning. Maybe then his wife would…no, that would be asking too much. She was a good mother to his children. That was all the he would ask from her, now.