Halestorm

by Becky Akers

  “Barrels it is,” Nathan said. “Any objections, sir?”

  Guy strove to recall whether barrels enjoyed lethal applications he had hitherto overlooked before admitting his bewilderment.

  “Perhaps ’tis only a New Haven pastime,” Nathan said. “Anyway, we set up three or four barrels, one right after the other, and then you jump into the first one, and from it into the second, and so on down the row. ’Tis harder than it sounds from my description, maybe even harder than killing a man at ten paces.”

  “Better say no: that’s my advice,” Tallmadge said. “Secundus is the best at barrels I ever saw.”

  Nathan waved a hand dismissively. “’Tis kind of you, Tallmadge, after last night.”

  “Why?” Guy said. “What happened?”

  “We tried for seven, but I didn’t clear the sixth.”

  “Didn’t you see how he’s limping?” Tallmadge said. “And we’ve got a football game Saturday against the town boys.”

  Nathan rocked back on his heels. “Mr. Daggett, I’m honored you want to fight me, but there’s probably a college law someplace that we can’t duel with anything more dangerous than barrels. We’re all of us studying for the ministry. We can’t go around killing men in the meantime.” He glanced skyward as thunder boomed. “You’ll excuse me, I’m sure,” he said before leaping to battle the sails.

  Though Nathan was serene, anxiety once again puckered Tallmadge’s face as they stepped between tiller and mast. Guy was seething, without concern for their predicament, but as the storm overtook them and waves swamped the boat, his mouth went dry. Then his stomach heaved. He staggered toward the side of the sloop but failed to reach it in time. Huddled on the deck, too sick to care about dignity, he retched. Through his nausea, he glimpsed Nathan at the tiller, looking as if he relished the lashing of spray and wind. Either he was too big a fool to understand their danger, or he was a superb sailor. Guy wiped a shaking hand across his mouth as a wave washed away his mess. He comforted himself with the thought that Hale undoubtedly sailed as well as he did everything else.

  They floundered for an eternity, lightning turning the water to silver when it broke over the boat’s side, until the storm wore itself out. Clouds fled the setting sun as they reached the harbor, Nathan’s hand firm on the tiller.

  From his station at the mast, Tallmadge covered his fear with a laugh. “I thought we’re lost for sure.”

  “Not with me aboard.” Nathan grinned. “I’m going to hang one day, so I can’t die at sea. Even thought of hiring myself out to the captains hereabouts—sort of a Jonah in reverse.”

  This must have been an old joke, for they laughed until Tallmadge noticed Guy’s bafflement and said, “There’s a birthmark on his neck, where a noose would come. Show him, Secundus.”

  Once Guy glimpsed the purplish stain below his jaw, he remembered how he and the other boys had teased Nathan with the same prediction as children. Nathan retied his stock and said, “Just my luck, Mr. Daggett, I’d win our duel and hang for murder.”

  When they docked, Guy leaped onto the wharf and hurried away, though Tallmadge shouted after him that there were barrels aplenty at the chandler’s shop. Guy cursed the Hales in general and Nathan in particular all the way back to Coventry.

  But when he ventured to the Hale farm, a surprise awaited in Alice. She sparkled at him as she had while talking of Nathan and agreed eagerly to his suggestion that they take the air in his buggy. He handed her into it while the Deacon glowered. His own eyes glimmering with contempt, Guy slapped the reins so that the horse leaped forward and sprayed the older man with mud.

  This disrespect was not lost on Alice, and she tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. “Tell me more about life in London, Mr. Daggett.”

  He exulted at the change in her, at her return of the ardor that had tortured him for two months. He attempted more caresses than usual, patting her hand, even her knee. This last was too bold, and she shifted in alarm. He smiled rakishly as he observed that the French attitude toward amour was a sensible one. With that, he turned the horse around and soon drew to a halt before her house.

  He had hardly handed Alice to the ground before Elijah Ripley was looping the reins of his dappled bay over the hitching post beside them. “Afternoon, Miss Adams.”

  “Afternoon, Mr. Ripley.” Alice swept past him. Guy spared a condescending nod and followed her to the door.

  The Deacon stood at his desk in the hall, looking over his accounts. He glanced up at them, then, catching sight of Elijah, capped his inkpot. Such smiles as had never greeted Guy wreathed his face.

  “Welcome, Elijah! Been a while since we’ve seen you.”

  “Press of business, sir.” Elijah fidgeted with his wig. He was a short man, and soft, and Guy noted with delight the beginnings of a paunch though he was but twenty-six.

  Elijah had inherited an import-export business and so owned Coventry’s largest fortune. He was also frustrating the mothers thereabouts because he preferred playing checkers with the Deacon to courting their daughters. Yet he was indeed courting, and Guy, who had instantly seen through his poor showing on the board, wondered that the ladies did not. Elijah plainly hoped for Alice as his wife, but he was too shy to approach her directly. He was more comfortable losing game after game to her father, currying favor with the fulcrum who could push her into wedlock.

  Guy let his gaze travel scornfully from the merchant’s freshly powdered wig over his best Meeting clothes to his spotless boots, while Elijah asked, “How about a rematch, Deacon?” and gave his diffident smile.

  CHAPTER 4

  For months after Nathan and Enoch returned to Yale, the house seemed twice as big and half as full to the Deacon. There was no shortage of inhabitants, to be sure. A homey clatter echoed from the kitchen as Abigail and the girls concocted bread, cakes, stews. One of his sons was usually chopping wood and another hauling water from the spring. Neighbors visited with news from town. They frowned at the checkerboard as Joseph or Samuel triumphed again and debated the transgressions of the Ministry and Parliament over Abigail’s pie. Still, the farm lacked a vitality, a promise of excitement, that permeated it during Nathan’s visits. Life seemed flat, like sass without salt.

  Aggravating his despondency was the fact that Guy Daggett was always underfoot. Deacon Hale loathed the young man. It was not because of Guy’s resemblance to his father. The Deacon had never considered George Daggett, with his greed and cowardice, a rival for Elizabeth’s hand, and he doubted that Elizabeth had either. Having won her, he had put George out of mind.

  No, he detected in Guy Daggett his father’s low character. George had been the sort likely to ambush an enemy on a dark night, from behind, sliding a knife between his ribs and disappearing before the death-rattle sounded in his throat, instead of confronting him fairly, by light of day. Honor and duty were foreign to him. He had passed these flaws to his son, and they branded him a Daggett as surely as his dark eyes. The Deacon’s lip curled each time Guy bragged about collecting duties on the Connecticut River. Typical—that he disdained an honest living, earned by his own sweat, in favor of robbing his neighbors. The Deacon mourned to see such a man coming and going in his home as if he were already one of the family.

  It was the “already” that roiled his gut. How long before Daggett declared his intentions and the Deacon must once again prohibit a wedding? At sixteen, Alice was too young to marry. Let her wait a few years until she attained a respectable age. Meanwhile, she ought not even smile at such a man as Daggett, though if the Deacon so ordered, she would elope from spite. His wife was relieved that Alice had decided on someone, anyone, other than Nathan. He could imagine Abigail’s alarm and Alice’s shrieks that he was making an old maid of her if he forbade the romance.

  The only salvation lay in Elijah Ripley. But as Daggett’s visits increased, Ripley’s decreased, to the Deacon’s chagrin. In charitable moments, the Deacon attributed that to the merchant’s abhorrence of Daggett, the same disgust that
goaded him.

  At other times, he wished Ripley would show more backbone. He ought not slink away like an embarrassed cat because a rat had slipped through the barn’s door. Let him pounce on the enemy, snap his neck in superior jaws. The Deacon tried to encourage Ripley during his rare appearances that winter, but the younger man wore defeat almost visibly.

  These concerns were troubling Deacon Hale when he dismounted before Coventry’s best ordinary one afternoon in February. The tavern was a substantial building of two storeys, as befit the physical and social center of town. A bar and portcullis occupied one corner of the taproom. Along the rear wall yawned a huge hearth, its mantle crowded with curiosities: the largest pine cone ever found in Connecticut, according to Eliphalet Root, the tavern’s owner; the tail of a white fox; a seashell from Barbados. At the center lay an object withered beyond recognition. Root swore it was the hand of the Indian who had scalped his grandfather, Coventry’s first settler.

  The usual farmers were gathered around the table nearest the fireplace, tobacco smoke hanging thick above them. One man had joined the group: James Sabin, proprietor of an ordinary in Rhode Island, who was visiting his sister, the Widow Thatcher. Sabin had been among the citizens of Providence who attacked a royal customs ship the previous summer, boarding HMS Gaspee when she grounded on a sandbar. “Ahyuh, that lieutenant they got captaining her, he’s a great hand at stealing pigs and chickens from the farmers along the bay there, but he don’t know much about navigating. Shoulda heard him holler when we set fire to his ship. Burnt her to the waterline, we did.”

  The Deacon helped himself to a long clay pipe from the rack on the wall. He broke off the tip of the stem and filled the bowl as the men called greetings. Eliphalet Root rose from his seat beside Sabin to mix rum and molasses for the Deacon’s flip.

  Discussion of matters between the colonies and England continued as the Deacon took a seat. Though the topic was an old one, it solaced him. There was no Guy Daggett to offend, no Abigail or Alice glaring at him when he denounced the slavery Parliament would foist on them.

  Elijah Ripley arrived and selected his pipe and chair with a worried frown. All Coventry knew his business was foundering on the rocky whims of government. Not only was he suffering at the hands of Guy Daggett on the Connecticut River, but Customs had impounded one of his boats in the West Indies with a cargo of sugar in its hold. There it sat with his profits under seal of the king, not to be released until he handed over the money the government insisted he owed.

  “Owe? For what?” Ripley raised his mug of rum to them and found a new audience in Sabin. “King help me bargain for that sugar? He hire my crew or pay them or risk his capital underwriting my voyage? Not on your life, sir. But now he wants part of my profit. Well, time he shares his profits with me, I’ll let him have some of mine.”

  That sentiment earned Elijah a refill on the house.

  After several hours of decrying the royal attempt to plunder honest men, Ripley reached for his tricorn. He spoke his goodbyes and stood to leave. Deacon Hale also rose, requesting a moment of his time.

  “Say, Deacon, wait a minute,” Eliphalet Root called. “Think there’s word for you there from your boys.” He pointed to the mantel, where three letters were laced between the Indian’s fingers.

  The Deacon stepped close to peer at them. His face lighted when he read his name in Nathan’s hand on the thickest packet, and he tucked it into a pocket. Then he followed Ripley into the twilight.

  “Well, sir?” Elijah disentangled his reins from the hitching post.

  The Deacon cleared his throat. How should he encourage a man to pursue his daughter more amorously? “My daughter, sir, Alice Adams. I—you, ah—”

  “You wouldn’t mind if I called on her again sometime?”

  “Mind?” Was Ripley daft? “I’d be gratified, sir.”

  “But you said—I thought you said she’s too young. Though I see Guy Daggett’s rig tied up in your yard every time I drive past.”

  “He’s persistent.” The Deacon nodded. “You have to be, too.”

  “Can’t understand why she likes Daggett so much. He’s got no money—well, he didn’t have any until he started stealing from us on the river.” Elijah snorted. “Been thinking lately, maybe I ought to find a wife, settle down.”

  “Man leaves his father, he needs a wife to cleave to, Elijah.”

  “It’s just that I spend so much time with my ledgers and all and down at the waterfront, I don’t know how to talk to the ladies, especially one like Miss Adams. She want me to call on her, sir, would you know? Could you maybe put in a good word for me?”

  The Deacon laid an arm around Elijah’s shoulders. “Come out for dinner tomorrow, will you? Alice’ll be delighted.”

  He watched Elijah canter down the road, then patted the letter in his pocket. Perhaps things were righting themselves after all. He swung into his saddle and headed home, believing he could already smell Abigail’s supper.

  He opened the packet after they had finished the meal and family prayers. The boys had written one sheet to everyone, with individual notes to some. The Deacon distributed these but frowned as he came to one for Alice from Nathan. She had the decency to blush as he gave it to her. He watched as she sank onto the settle and broke the seal.

  “My dearest Ally—”

  She closed her eyes, then, remembering the Deacon, opened them. Nathan had never addressed a letter this way. Her joy at recognizing his copperplate swelled into ecstasy, and her hands shook so that the paper rattled. Again, she felt the Deacon’s stare. She took a breath to steady herself.

  My dearest Ally,

  I have long considered your arguments and conclude that you are right. Honor and duty have their place, but so do the nobler emotions. We shall discuss this when next I am home. Until then, think of me fondly.

  Your loving brother, Nathan

  That was so like him. She understood that he was ready to defy his father, that they would marry, but anyone else would think he was conceding her point in a debate. As the others read their letters aloud, she innocently shared Nathan’s, too.

  She must break with Guy at once. Her sudden change would hurt him, and she quailed from that, for she was fond of him and his flattery. He had even pressed her for permission to approach the Deacon and request her hand. But now—! Guy was due for supper tomorrow. Afterwards, when they strolled to the spring, she would explain that she had reconsidered.

  She sang her way through the next day. Not even Elijah Ripley’s appearance at dinner and the Deacon’s maneuvering to seat them next to each other dimmed her joy. Though Ripley joked in his heavy fashion, even daring to flirt once or twice, Alice ignored him, consumed by dreams of Nathan.

  Their wedding would be the loveliest ever, even if it occurred far from Coventry and the Deacon. They would likely live in New Haven while Nathan finished school. He would return to their rooms at day’s end, where she would wait with a meal of her own making and loving arms to soothe his strain. They would study together, Nathan sharing what he had learned in recitation. And then, when they blew out the candles....She was so lost in fantasy that afternoon that she burned the pudding she was supposed to stir, with Abigail wrinkling her nose at the stench and telling her to feed it to the pigs.

  At last, they sat at table, with Guy in his usual place. The Deacon said grace and helped himself to applesauce. “I forgot to tell you when I got home from town yesterday, there was so much excitement with the mail and all, but James Sabin was visiting from up to Providence. He told about how they burnt that customs ship last summer.”

  Abigail caught her husband’s eye and nodded toward their guest. “Please, Richard, not another political discussion.”

  “I remember that.” Samuel, as fiery a patriot as Nathan, raised his head. “Dudley or something, that was the captain’s name.”

  “Dudingston. Yep, he went great guns, robbing the folks over there and harassing any merchant who wasn’t eager to pay the king a t
ithe every time he come to port. So one night whilst Dudingston was chasing another boat that didn’t pay, his ship run aground, and Sabin and the men of the town turned out and burned it. Just because they call it Customs, and Parliament says it’s legal, don’t mean they have the right to go steal three pence on every gallon of molasses.”

  How tactless! Alice glanced at the customs officer who sat at their table.

  “Didn’t they wound Dudingston?” Samuel said.

  “Well, but from what Sabin said, he had it coming, after all the ship’s captains he robbed.” The Deacon smiled thinly. “When he could catch them without running aground, that is. And that’s to say nothing of the livestock and wood he stole from everyone living along the bay there.”

  “What do you expect when his job’s to thieve for the king?” Samuel said. “Can’t blame a man for thinking it’s fine for him to thieve if ’tis all right for kings.”

  “Dudingston can’t have had much honor to begin with, he’s going to enforce such piracy.” The Deacon piled parsnips on his plate, and Alice chanced another look at Guy. Though a vein pounded in his forehead, he held himself in check. He had received much practice in that as the Deacon’s guest.

  “Now the king says we have to buy sugar from British colonies, but we can’t buy from the French even though their price is better,” the Deacon continued. “Sooner or later, he ought to see that where we buy our sugar, that’s none of his business.”

  “You’d think he’d have better things to worry about,” Joseph said. “But Mr. Daggett, you spent time in London. Tell us, why’s the king dictating where we buy our sugar and slapping taxes on everything?”

  “There are huge debts from the Seven Years’ War.” Guy spoke mildly as yet, to Alice’s relief. “We fought that war to protect your lands, and you too, of course, and now you have to help pay for it.”

  “Taxation is robbery!” The Deacon pounded the table so vehemently that crockery and family jumped.