by Pete Hamill
“Happy birthday, son,” Da said, and smiled, sitting high in a rough saddle.
He reached down and scooped up Robert with one hand and jammed him in the front of the saddle, where the boy ran his hands for the first time through the horse’s lustrous coat. It was September 9, and his father had come home with a horse. His horse. Their horse. On his birthday.
Together, they trotted to the front door, where Rebecca stood smiling in a delighted, conspiratorial way. Bran barked loudly until he saw John Carson dismount and then swing the boy down, holding him beneath the arms, whirling him and laughing louder than the storm. A rumble of distant thunder came from the south.
“Thunder,” Da said. “We’ll name him Thunder.”
“Yes, yes,” Robert said. “Thunder! Yes, Da, thank you, Da, oh Da, oh Da, thank you.”
Then all of them stood in the rain and ran their hands over the wet ebony coat of the horse named Thunder, who shuddered in delight. The boy would always remember the feel of muscles rippling in the shoulders of the horse, the grooves of his neck and buttocks and thighs. There were cables of tendon drawn like lines from his knees to his hocks. The horse looked at them with liquid black eyes as the rain pelted them all. Looking as if he knew that he had found his home.
Robert’s heart was beating hard. A horse. Here in the gray sheets of Ulster rain. After the beef stew and the slice of apple cobbler and the toasting with icy water; after the hugs and the vows of more and more birthdays and a wonderful year to come at school; after his father hugged him again and again; after he saw tears welling in his mother’s eyes; after all of that, they walked Thunder to the tool room of the forge, where he gobbled a huge bucket of oats and then folded his legs and lay down upon the straw.
“He’s yours now, lad,” Da said.
“No,” Robert said. “He’s ours. Forever.”
In the morning, an hour before Robert left for school, and while the rain eased into mist, Da showed the boy Thunder’s hooves, the central cleft, the sole, the wall around it, and explained how the shoe was shaped to fit around each hoof like a sheath. “When you come home,” Da said, “we’ll make him some fine shoes. The two of us. Now, away with you.”
Robert learned very little at school that day. While the Rev. Robinson droned on and on, the boy’s head was filled with the beauty and power of the horse. When school ended, he ran all the way home. Da was in the forge. He smiled at Robert and stepped to the anvil, and without a word began shaping new shoes, with the boy’s help, adding a fine line of brass as a trim between the hoof and shoe. The new shoes fit perfectly; it was as if John Carson had been preparing for this piece of work for many years, and of course, he had. Then one hoof at a time, gently using nails and calks, he attached the wonderful shoes. The lines of brass looked like gold.
That night they planned the fence that would mark the limits of their land and become the free home of Thunder. Since they had never owned a horse, they never before had need of a fence. Two nights later, some of the burly strangers appeared at dusk, carrying wood and tools, and began hammering and singing and drinking. When they heard the sound of horses in the distance, they went silent and vanished into the darkness until the horses or coaches had passed. Four of them, in fact, were always in the darkness. Robert tried to help with the fence, but was sent off to bed, where his mother told him to dream about lands of milk and honey.
When he awoke at dawn, the strangers were gone and the fence was finished. It now marked the limits of everything that was the Carsons’: the house, the forge, the hawthorn tree. Over the following weeks, he and his father made a trough for oats and a one-horse stable in the space between the back of the forge and the hawthorn tree. And every day, in the early morning or after school, Robert rode Thunder. Sometimes his father got up on the horse too, the three of them looking suddenly as if they were one creature, and the man showed his son the tricks of control. Within weeks, Robert could ride with a saddle or without, using the bridle or making the horse stop or turn with the pressure of his knees. Da taught him to talk to Thunder always, because, he said, the horse understands. It’s your tone of voice, he explained. The tone of your voice. Just tell him what you want, and he’ll know. Be kind to him, be gentle, and when you need him, he’ll know how to be fierce.
Thunder became the happiest of Robert’s duties. His father put him to work cleaning and oiling the hard rough leather saddle, doing the work each day until the saddle grew softer. He showed him how to wash Thunder so that his coat glistened without the presence of the sun. He could not leave a trace of soap on the great black coat, for it would irritate Thunder’s skin and make him flake. Thunder loved the feel of fresh water, as Robert did, and rain, as the boy did too, and the feel of a coarse towel drying him in the stall. And the horse loved them to talk to him: whispering to him, running fingernails along his long flat brow. Every morning before breakfast, the boy looked into the horse’s deep, intelligent eyes and spoke in low, loving tones and the horse answered with the love in his eyes.
8.
One Saturday afternoon, Da took Robert for a ride into Belfast. Down the road past the butcher and the fishmonger, and deeper into places the boy had not seen on trips with his mother. He explained to the boy how they lived in an area called Stranmillis, which ran down to the banks of the River Lagan, which in turn flowed into the Lough, the immense harbor that dug into the land from the east. He told the boy that the name Belfast came from an Irish phrase: Beal Feirste, which meant the Mouth of the Sand-Banked River. These were the first words Da spoke directly to him in Irish, but he added no others. He was too busy explaining geography to the boy, pointing out Cave Hill and Divis and the Black Mountain, all rising above the Sand-Banked River, then gesturing across the shimmering water at a distant castle called Carrickfergus.
“That was built before there was a town,” Da said. “To guard the entrance to the Lough. And before that, the Vikings were here, the Norsemen, building forts and houses and eating the fish, which were thicker here than in all of Ireland.”
His knowledge astonished the boy as they followed a smaller river called the Fearsat, a slow, leaky tributary of the Lagan. Soon the embankment itself was paved and flagged, with Thunder’s gold-trimmed shoes making a clacking sound, and they were in Castle Street, the river still moving sluggishly to their left. They passed many shops run by linen merchants. Da named the bank and the post office and the ruin of the original castle of the Lord of Donegal. A large crowd milled about in front of the Market House, talking and smoking and gesturing, and Da said that much of the town’s business took place there, usually out of the rain inside the building. As they moved, Castle Street became Front Street, and his father told Robert the names of smaller streets feeding into it: Ann Street and Rosemary Lane, Pottinger’s Entry and Wilson’s Court, Crown Entry and Winecellar Entry, with men and women and horses moving steadily in and out of the lanes. Da carefully explained all of this to his son, and to Thunder too, as if wanting to give each of them the essential geography in which they lived.
As they rode, they attracted some attention. Young boys looked up in awe at the black stallion, its massive rider, the boy in front of him, for Thunder had never been seen before in the town. Women paused and widened their eyes. Men nudged one another and whispered.
They arrived finally at the waterfront, where a hundred masts rose beside Donegal Quay. There for the first time Robert saw ships in full many-masted sail, and docks covered with crates and boxes and barrels. Rough men unloaded cargo as they watched: sugar and tobacco from America (his father told him), along with hemp and pitch and tar and timbers, all for the building of new ships. Cotton and silk, spices and dyes from Asia. Salt and wine, silk and fruit from Italy and Spain. The workingmen paid them no heed. They had seen fine horses before, and strangers too. Their hooded, squinting eyes seemed to have already looked at all the strange people and things offered by the world.
Da told Robert where the ships were going, and the names sounded lik
e the words of a fairy tale. Liverpool and London. Cherbourg and Marseilles. Bilbao and Morocco and the Canary Islands. And yes, America. For the first time the boy felt the tug of the world beyond the world he knew, moving in him like a tide.
“Those buildings are full of men who live off the sea,” Da said, pointing at the low brick houses that lined the far end of the immense waterfront square. There were chandlers making candles and coopers shaping barrels. There were wheelwrights and sextant makers and stevedores. But he called his son’s attention to the second-floor offices above the shops. “Those are the companies that run the ships. They have the power here. Usually,” he said, “there’s a group of rich men who pool their money and share in the profits of each voyage.”
“And the sailors, Da? The men on the ships? Do they get rich too?”
“Never,” he said. “They die. Or they live. The voyage begins, the voyage ends. If they come back alive from the sea, they get paid. They never get rich.”
Many of the storefronts bore names elegantly lettered on signs above the doors, and through panes of glass Robert could see men in business suits, some wearing wigs, waving paper, sipping tea, writing with quill pens, or talking to clerks. One such business was called the Royal African Company.
“Do they sail to Africa too, Da?”
“Aye,” he said. “To our eternal shame.”
“And what do they trade for there?” Robert said.
“Men.”
“Men?”
“And women and children too.”
“What?”
“Slaves,” he said. “They go into the Gold Coast and the Gambia River and they hunt men. And then they take them to America and sell them the way some men sell donkeys.”
“Do they come to Belfast too?”
“No. They just have their offices here, son. They sign the papers and send the ships to Africa, and they pick up their cargoes and then sail on to America. Then the slaves must work for nothing for the people who buy them. They become property. Like dogs or horses.”
He nudged Thunder and they trotted closer to the offices of the Royal African Company. Coming out of the front door, engulfed by six other men, was the Earl of Warren. He was taller than he had seemed in the dim recesses of the black coach, but his body was fleshy, like his face, and soft under his clothes, unlike the lean men of the countryside or the men who worked the ships. He paused for a moment, surrounded by other men, including the man with the eye patch who drove the black coach. He said something, smiled, and they all laughed. Small boys in ragged clothes began to arrive, as if this were a daily ritual, and then from side streets came two women in rags, one of them using a tree limb as a cane.
The earl took from his pocket three small balls, red, white, and blue, and stepped back, an amused look on his face. He planted his feet wide apart and began to juggle the balls. And Robert noticed the change that came into his face. The earl looked younger, like a mischievous boy in a schoolyard, his brow furrowed in concentration, his mouth smiling without showing teeth, and his eyes beginning to sparkle as he moved the balls into a blur. Then, one at a time, he snatched the balls from their flight, smiled broadly, and took an exaggerated bow.
The group around him cheered and Robert wanted to cheer too. He’d never seen a man do such things before, to stand and make people shout in thanks or clap their hands in delight. The scary face of the sneering earl who’d passed their house now vanished. He saw only the smiling man who could juggle. And then another side of him: The small boys crowded around him, and he put a coin into each of their hands, wagging a finger at those who pressed too hard. Then he called the two old women to him and used fingers to pry more coins from a vest pocket and gave one to each woman. The crippled woman bowed in reverence, the other curtsied. The earl said something and looked concerned about the health of the women, while the men nodded in approval.
Then the earl led the way to the corner and went into a public house. Through all of this, Da was silent and still. He explained the function of the public house to Robert in an amused way: “They go to a publican and order courage by the pint.” But he said nothing about the skill of the juggling act or the giving of alms. He and Robert looked at the man with the eye patch, waiting outside the front door, arms as thick as thighs folded across his chest.
“That’s one of your slavers,” Da said as the small crowd dispersed, and he turned Thunder to go back. “Not the boyo with the patch. His commander. The Earl of Warren. The juggler. The man handing out the ha’penny pieces. English, he is, and he doesn’t even know that he’s insulting Irish people with his public charity.” He shook his head. “They say he’s full of charm.” He humphed. “They say the women love him.” He sighed. As they trotted away from the wharves, Da explained that the earl traded in linen and land. “It’s said that he’s buying choice lots out by the river, knowing Belfast will grow. And the News-Letter says he’s bought land in America, without ever seeing it. Land in New York, the News-Letter says. But mostly it’s the African trade that brings in the money. They say he wants to become the richest man in Ireland, and maybe he will. He’s done very well for himself. Out past Carrickfergus he’s bought a huge demesne, with a mansion and stable and huts for his help….”
“And does he have slaves working for him?”
“Yes, but not from Africa.”
9.
They could feel Belfast growing in their direction, even if they could not see it very clearly. Robert imagined the earl as part of that growth, standing on once-wooded hills, juggling, smiling, bowing to applause. On quiet evenings, he heard his father talking to his mother about the people they were seeing more often on the road, with their earthly goods piled in tottering wagons. “They’re being driven out of Belfast,” Da said, “by the bloody taxes.” His voice quivered with anger. By some royal grant, Da said, Belfast was the absolute property of the Lord of Donegal, one of the Chichester family, people who did nothing for Belfast except collect rents while living grandly in London. The taxes were fixed by the local government and then were added to the rents of ordinary people, rising higher and higher year after year.
“Whoremongers,” Da called the people who collected rent and taxes. “The whoremonger Chichesters.” He gestured toward the people with the carts and said, “They’re coming out here to move beyond Chichester’s greed.” Robert didn’t completely understand all of this, such vague words as “rent” and “taxes,” although he was pleased to hear from his mother that they owned their land and thus paid no rent. What Robert did know was that month after month, more houses suddenly appeared, scattered around the once-empty fields. Strangers arrived with saws and axes and chopped down the trees and soon a house stood where woods once marched toward the Lagan. There was more traffic on the Dublin road now, wagons, horses, carriages, and new faces. Twice more, he saw the black coach, once racing for Dublin with women inside the cabin, their hair rising like frost off pale faces. A few weeks later, the Earl of Warren returned alone. The boy wondered if the Royal African Company had offices in Dublin too and imagined the earl juggling for the women and bowing to their applause.
With the growth of the town and the heavy traffic on the Dublin-to-Belfast road, his father was busier than ever, sometimes working by the light of lanterns into the night. But there was one consolation after Thunder’s arrival: Da could ride now to his appointments beyond their little world, and always returned more quickly. While he worked and traveled, the boy’s mother explained in more detail about what it meant to be a Jew, telling tales of angels passing over houses to save the Hebrews from death, and what the commandments meant (as related by Moses, not the Rev. Robinson), and how much they must struggle against the sin of vanity. Robert still hid his secret from his classmates, the private knowledge of being a Hebrew, and in a small way that kept him apart from them. But for a while, he did have more friends. They often walked through rain and drizzle to the Carson house, sometimes gazing in awe at the work in the forge, sometimes bringing lit
tle biscuits for the boy’s mother, all wanting to ride Thunder. Robert’s mother always said that by the rules of the house, nobody else would be allowed to ride Thunder, but then she moved quickly to head off any resentment from the boys.
“Come in now, lads,” she always said, “and have a cup of tea by the fire and a nice little sweet.”
Then, one frigid Saturday morning while the boy’s father was off on Thunder to work on a horse made lame by ill-fitting shoes, Robert and his mother set out on foot for shopping. The rain that January morning was heavy, slanting against them as they walked, driven by a mountain wind. On the streets of Belfast in such foul weather, there were no murmured niceties; on such days, they would quickly make their purchases and hurry home. On this day, which was January 17, 1737, after almost a week of rain, the streets were gluey with mud, rutted by the passage of carriages. Robert and his mother hugged the facades of the buildings. She slipped into the fishmonger’s shop, chatting briefly and pleasantly. Robert wandered outside to the street. Across the mud-jammed street, he saw his friend Tommy Hastings and called to him in the driving rain. Tommy waved, then gestured for Robby to come over, pointing at something in a shop window. Robert started across the street, but the mud sucked at his boots. He looked down, and the mud was above his ankles, gripping him like wet mortar. Tommy shouted words that Robert could not hear. Then he heard a noise coming from his left and saw the black coach charging at him from fifty feet away in a blind, slopping, sucking roar, the horses driven wildly, galloping furiously under the lash, the blurred wheels throwing mud everywhere, spattering windows, sending gray brown lumps of muck into the gray slanting rain.
The boy couldn’t move. He lifted one foot, trying to turn, and then another, and the roar was coming, coming, coming, coming.
Straight at him.