by Becky Akers
Asa gulped, sweat breaking on his forehead. “Th—th—three.” He had barely forced the word from his mouth before Nathan threw the ball of yarn at him. It bounced off Asa’s shoulder to roll along the aisle. Asa looked up in bewilderment while some of the bolder boys laughed.
“Go ahead, Mr. Covington, pick it up. Now you’ve got The Wool, and you can throw it at the next man who answers wrong. You miss your chance because you’re wool-gathering,” Nathan pulled a face, “you’ll have to wait for the next wrong answer. But whatever happens, you don’t want to be left holding The Wool at the end of the day.”
“Why?” Andrew Crookson asked. “Does that fellow get whipped?”
“Worse. That man’s tarnished his honor because we’ll all know he’s a woolly thinker.” Nathan hoped a few groans would answer this second pun, but his students stared with closed faces. Loneliness swamped him as he reached behind him for his Bible. “I’ll read the passage this morning, but after this, it’s up to you gentlemen. We’ll work our way around the room, starting with you tomorrow, Mr. Stillwell. You choose the chapter and read it to us. But be ready for questions on the meaning.” He opened the Bible to his favorite passage, the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians. “‘Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’
“Now, who’s got a question?”
The boys stared, puzzled. Matt had complained that Master Slocum read the chapter in a singsong, commanding silence as he did, and never permitted questions, though he read from Revelation.
Finally, Matt raised his hand. “Sir, aren’t you going to call the roll? We always start with that.”
“The roll? Why?”
Matt sat dumbfounded, at last venturing, “To make sure we’re all here.”
“You’ll all be here, Mr. Snow. We’ll be having such fun you won’t want to miss a class. Now, gentlemen, you must have questions. This Scripture’s one of the mysteries of our faith. ’Tis a great assurance, too, that we don’t need to fear death. We’re like the phoenix, the bird that rises from its own ashes. Think a moment how flesh that’s prone to disease and death will become incorruptible, and all in an instant, as Paul says. Can this be explained by a natural process, or is it beyond us? Mr. Harrison, what do you think?”
Luke Harrison, another of Slocum’s victims, turned crimson before croaking a syllable or two.
Nathan cocked his head as if the boy had delivered a theological masterpiece. “Exactly, Mr. Harrison. And there’s that passage from Hamlet: ‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!’ Sounds as if Mr. Shakespeare’s talking about resurrected Man, doesn’t it? Because we’re hardly infinite in faculty here on earth. What do you think, Mr. Wilkes?”
He continued asking, “What do you think?” And as he sought their opinions on everything from electricity to poetry, they forgot that school was supposed to be dull and torturous.
He gave them no exhausting lists of Latin verbs to memorize. Instead, they read Martial and absorbed the vocabulary lurking between naughty ladies and brazen lovers.
He brought a basket of apples to class the day after assigning the Greek alphabet for memorization and challenged them to a race. “I’m going to take a bite and chew it, and any man who gives me the whole alphabet before I swallow gets an apple, too.” He tossed fruit through the air like balls, urging them to eat as class continued.
They romped in Elysian fields with Nathan as guide, danced through Aristotle, hung spellbound as he explained John Locke to them and then requested that they translate the Theory of Natural Law into Latin.
Their ultimate compliment came three weeks later, during the morning recess. He was sitting in the shade of the birch tree, recovering now that its branches were left to it, and trimming quills for pens. The boys had divided into teams for football but needed another player. It wasn’t so much that they invited him to join them, but that they did so naturally, seeing nothing strange in it. His first kick sent the ball spinning over an oak, the tallest in Haddam’s Landing, at the edge of the yard. They stared, openmouthed.
The next week, Asa Covington told the class that his uncle John, a student at Yale, had written him of a pastime known as barrels. According to John, the master was a champion at it. Nothing would do but that Nathan prove it. For the next month, barrels disappeared from storerooms, and boys came to school with barked shins and elbows.
Thereafter, he could do no wrong, even when he came upon some students gaming with homemade cards behind the schoolhouse. He confiscated the deck, rolling his eyes. “Now, gentlemen, long as your fathers are going to complain about me, let it be because I don’t call roll, or that we read Martial, not that I’ve turned you into gamblers.” That was all he said, a far cry from the whippings Slocum would have generously dispensed.
Nathan wondered that no one protested his leniency. Most parents agreed the rod was a boy’s best teacher and expected its daily use. Two of the school’s proprietors had even announced that they would hire a master with no education so long as he had a strong arm. But these same people smiled ever more kindly at him on the street, in Meeting, at the tavern. And Mrs. Snow ranked him only a tad below the Archangel Gabriel.
So he was unprepared for the storm he occasioned in December. At the quarterly meeting of the proprietors, he said, “Gentlemen, I’d like to offer a class every morning from 6 to 8, before the regular school day. For young ladies.”
Silence met him. At length, he continued, “Of course, I’ll pay you for the use of your schoolhouse.”
“And just what do you aim to teach these girls?”
“What I teach their brothers: Latin, Greek, history, composition—”
“Master Hale.” Robert Wilkes, an enthusiast of the strong-arm theory of education, cleared his throat. “You’ve done a fine job, sir, a fine one. I think we’re all of us impressed at how much our sons have learned and how their behavior’s improved. I’m impressed by your honor, too, sir.” He paused, and Nathan bowed. “You’re a young man of cultivation and learning, and I’d wager, innocent, extremely innocent. That’s why, sir, it don’t occur to you how—how inappropriate ’tis for a young man to teach girls.”
“Hear, hear!” the others agreed as Nathan shook his head.
Wilkes held up a hand to forestall his objections. “I doubt they can be taught much, first of all. Secondly, sir, they won’t be concentrating on their books with an unmarried master up there, now will they? You can see how this would look.”
“Sir, I never meant—”
“I know. We hired you to teach our boys, and we got no complaints there, sir, no complaints at all. Let’s forget this other.”
The town would have gossiped for weeks over his ambition to educate females but for word of the Boston Tea Party, which arrived the next day. Crown and colonies had clashed little since the burning of HMS Gaspee in Rhode Island eighteen months before, so the Tea Party burst onto a stage free of distractions. Nathan’s class buzzed with the news.
“Master Hale, what’s the East India Company?” Ebenezer Dobbins asked when they’d read the day’s chapter.
“’Tis a group of men, most of them with some sort of ties to the Crown, who’re selling tea from India. Government gives them all kinds of privileges it doesn’t give other men who’re also selling tea.” When Ebenezer stared blankly, he explained, “Say, for example, I asked you and Mr. Crookson there to translate a passage from Pliny, but I gave Mr. Crookson the text in advance, with the English written above it and the grammar explained.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“It sure isn’t.”
“My dad says Parliament’s trying to bribe us with this tea.”
He ran a hand through his hair. �
�Lots of men in the government have stakes in the East India Company. But they don’t know much about the business, and their tea’s piling up faster than they can sell it. So Parliament’s fixed the laws on taxes and lets the Company sell us the tea without the tax. ’Tis cheaper than other tea, and that’s how they’re bribing us.”
“But I thought that’s what we wanted, no taxes.”
“We want no taxes on everything, not just one kind of tea because that suits the government this time around. And even aside from the tax, politicians shouldn’t favor one business over others, nor give it advantages. That’s got naught to do with protecting our liberty, which is government’s only job. In fact, it destroys the freedom of other businessmen and those of us buying their wares, too, since we’re paying for the privileges government gives its favorites. In this case, the Crown’s dropped the tax to make the tea cheaper so we’d ignore our principles. That’s why the Sons of Liberty up in Boston threw it into the harbor. And all this begs the question, doesn’t it, Mr. Harrison?”
Luke stuttered his usual three syllables, and Nathan nodded. “That’s right. What right does the government have to sell tea? There’re plenty of merchants already trying to make a living at this—and they don’t steal from their customers to cover a bad year, as the government does with taxes. The Crown’s intrusion into their market’ll probably ruin them.”
When reports of Boston’s Tea Party reached Coventry, Guy Daggett paled. If the colonists were riled enough to destroy the king’s property, he wanted nothing more to do with collecting revenues.
At the tavern that evening, he and his uncle heard men lament that only the tea and none of the ships’ crew had fallen overboard. The rascals who would foist the Loyalist brew on them ought to suffer, the townsmen cried while toasting their backsides at the hearth.
“I ask you, what’s His Majesty got to do with it if I want to buy tea and someone wants to sell me some?” Eliphalet Root flushed with excitement as he mixed a bowl of punch for the Daggetts. “Where’s the king’s part in that? What’s he favoring one set of merchants over another for?”
“Says in the paper the East India’s made too big a hole in the king’s purse,” Rev. Huntington said. “But that doesn’t give him the right to rob us. I run too big a debt to Brother Eliphalet here, I don’t go over to England and tell the king to give me his money.”
“Don’t hold a musket on him, neither, and make him give it up to you like a highwayman,” Eliphalet Root said.
“There’s plenty of them over there, highwaymen, my sister tells me,” Mr. Wright said. His sister had married a British cousin twenty years before and now lived on the outskirts of London, whence she sent her brother fascinating letters that kept all Coventry talking until the next one. “Don’t surprise me none that the general people are brigands when we got brigands running the government.”
“Gentlemen.” Deacon Hale, seated at the next table, rose, and Guy scowled as the others hushed to attend his words. “Gentlemen, seems we all agree the Tea Act Parliament passed wasn’t any way to treat free Englishmen.”
At the cries of “Hear, hear!” Jason Daggett shot to his feet. “Friends, what I’ve heard ain’t the talk of good Englishmen. Deacon says Parliament don’t treat us like free men. Well, maybe ’tis because we ain’t earned it. You claim the king’s got no rights to our money, but how’s he gonna protect us then? Our grandpappies run to him fast enough when the Indians was wiping out their towns.”
“My grandpappy didn’t run to nobody.” Eliphalet Root gestured at the withered hand above the hearth. “He killed the savages hisself. Didn’t have time to wait for a brigade to get here and do it for him.”
“Now hold on,” Jason Daggett said. “Our troops drove them French and Indians out of here, remember.”
“Really, sir?” The Deacon’s brows rose with his voice. “Then why can’t we settle beyond the Appalachians? Why’s the king keeping us out of there, all that rich land?”
As the room echoed with agreement, Jason Daggett shook his head. He leaned over and muttered to Guy, “See how they all kowtow to the Deacon? Like he’s a man to hearken to about war and suchlike when he ain’t never hefted a musket ’cepting to kill hogs. He ain’t fought for the king. I have. But they don’t listen to me, oh no.”
The men quieted, and the Deacon continued. “King says his army can’t control the Indians out West, so we can’t settle there. That’s hogwash, pure and simple. We don’t need armies brought all the way from England to fight the savages, not when we outnumber them. I’d wager there’s a score of us for every one of them, what with all of us in the militia from the time we’re sixteen till we’re sixty.”
“Come on, Deacon. That ain’t the reason government don’t want us crossing the mountains.” Eliphalet Root folded his arms as the Deacon murmured, “Oh, I know, friend.” “We got to stay along the coast, see, so we’ll keep buying from them. We get too far into the country, beyond where they can ship their goods, and likely we’ll take to making them ourselves. Merchants over there’d lose their best market. Fact, I bet ’twas the merchants got the king to tell us to stay put in the first place.”
The Deacon nodded. “There’s a bribe in there, somewheres or other. Whole government runs on corruption. You’re right, sir. King wants us here, this side of the mountains, not just for commerce, but we’re easier to control, then, too. He can keep his navy cruising near our harbors and keep an army among us and claim it’s all for our protection.”
“Well, ’tis!” Jason Daggett cried. “Don’t you want the government taking care of us? You want them to leave us alone, just abandon us like a motherless babe?”
“And look at the army, will ya?” Mr. Wright threw his hands wide. “City boys that got no more sense than to wear red coats in the woods. Don’t know to take cover behind a tree, neither. Think the way to fight Indians is the same as fighting Frenchmen or Spanish over yonder in Europe.”
“Like Braddock in ’55,” Rev. Huntington said. “He’ll have to answer for it one day, all that bloodshed, making his men stand in ranks and fire volleys while the French and their savages’re busy picking them off from the trees.”
“They done their best,” Jason Daggett said. “Seems to me we oughter feel sorry for ’em, not criticize ’em. All them poor boys dying for their country.”
“You mind I got a friend down Virginia-way.” Mr. Wright pursed his lips. “Mighta mentioned him afore—”
“The one was there with Braddock that day and that fellow from the Virginia militia,” Eliphalet Root said. “What’s his name…?”
“Washington. Anyway, my friend says Washington kept telling Braddock to get his boys behind trees, let ’em take cover—”
“Aw, come on. They wouldn’t have done it anyways.” Another man laughed. “They’d have run away, scared as them troops was. I heard they hightailed it back to civilization so fast they left their cannon sitting there in the woods, playpretties for the savages.”
“—and ’stead of doing that,” Mr. Wright continued doggedly, though every man there had heard his story a thousand times, “Braddock beat anyone trying to take cover with his sword. Made ’em stand there and take the enemies’ bullets.” He clucked his disdain. “Till he got shot, of course. My boy Asher might not be smart as some, but he says to me, ‘Pa, reckon ’twas his own men kilt him, so’s they could duck behind a tree.’ And I say he’s right.”
“Point is, the king’s army can’t fight in the woods. They don’t know how,” the Deacon said. “It’s obvious they’re here to control us, but the king wants us to pay for it, so he says it’s for our protection. Now I never asked the king to protect me from Indians—”
“Me neither,” Mr. Wright said. “It’s a disgrace, how he slaughters them people.”
“—so why am I paying for something I never ordered? I’d send Mr. Root here packing if he showed up at my farm with a barrel of beer and told me I had to buy it whether I wanted to or not. And the troops have
n’t even done the job I supposedly hired ’em for, what with the West being closed to us and unsecured, or so the king claims. That’s shoddy work. I don’t pay for shoddy work.”
But for the white seam of the scar the war had inflicted, Jason Daggett’s face turned red, and his voice, when he found it, shook. “Now just a minute, I—”
“My apologies, sir.” The Deacon bobbed a brief bow. “I didn’t mean to slight your service in the war. But the principle holds.”
“He’s right,” Eliphalet Root said. “King never asked if we wanted him to fight our battles.”
“Now he’s gone and done it,” the Deacon said, “he wants us to pay for it. So he’s robbing us with taxes. He’s taxed our sugar, our newspapers, our glass, our paints—next it’ll be our crops. What if every time we sell some corn, we got to pay a tithe to the king?”
“Aw, don’t talk stupid.” Jason Daggett waved a hand, dismissing such absurdity. “We’re good Englishmen. We obey the laws—”
“Conceive of a land tax grappled upon your estates, and imagine your wheat, your corn, your beef, your pork, your butter and cheese, and your teams, all taxed to maintain pensioners and placemen, and support the extravagancies of a bankrupt nation.” The Deacon’s voice climbed in his rage until it rang through the room.
“There’s some truth in what you say, sir.” Guy spoke for the first time. His comment caused not only the Deacon but his uncle to stare, and he looked from one to the other, weighing his words. He would favor the colonists, but not too strongly, lest they disbelieve his act. “King’s not an idiot though. No man, and certainly not our sovereign George, would tax our profits and livelihood. That’s tyranny, sir. Sometimes the king’s misguided, maybe, but he means well. He’ll do aught to hurt us. He’s trying to help us.” Guy was pleased at striking a credible and conciliatory note, but the Deacon attacked with renewed fury.