A More Perfect Union: A Novel (The Midwife Series Book 3)

by Jodi Daynard

  “Indeed?” All this, too, he knew already. But he crossed his long legs and placed his hands in his lap.

  “The beads must go,” Harry said regretfully.

  Everyone nodded his assent.

  “Something must be done about the hair,” added Giles. “Pomaded, I should think. And neatly plaited by someone who knows what they’re about. With such—colored—hair.”

  “Powdered?” his mother inquired.

  “Nay,” objected Harry. “No one powders his hair these days.”

  Bessie added, “He’ll be needing some proper clothing, too. A blue coat, at least.”

  “Oh, heavens,” Eliza breathed. “It has been too long. I know not what the American lads wear these days.”

  “Simple calico will do for now, madam,” Giles assured her. “But he shall need a blue coat come autumn.”

  Johnny knew it all already. He’d had an excellent tutor in Bridgetown, the abolitionist Reverend Nicholls of St. Michael’s Church. From Reverend Nicholls he had learned Latin and Greek and some Hebrew and French. Reverend Nicholls had also taught him about white attitudes. He must keep his bearing tall and erect, and look men directly in the eye, unashamed. He must be clean-shaven. And above all, he must never voice any objection to slavery or to those who favor it.

  For half an hour, Johnny had listened with gentle forbearance to his concerned friends, but now it was time to shatter their earnestness. He suddenly stood up, shook his curly head, and in his best Bajan creole, exclaimed, “Ooh, nay, nay! I not be wearin’ a blue jack-ette fuh noh-body. Da pompassettin’ do nobody no good in dis’ worl’.”

  “John-ny.” Eliza frowned.

  Bessie’s eyes nearly sprang from her head. She turned to the others with an air of desperation and announced in her own East London dialect, “But the child don’t even speak English! However shall ’e pass muster? Don’t ’e have to speak proper English and Greek and Latin and I don’t know what else? And here we have but a day to learn ’im!”

  Aunt Martha placed a steadying hand on the poor old woman’s arm, while the others sucked on their lips. “It’s all right, Bessie. I fear the child teases us all rather cruelly.”

  “Teases, Mrs. Lee?”

  “Yes. I suspect he speaks better English than you or I, should he wish to. Can’t you, Johnny?”

  “’e do? I don’t believe it. Let’s ’ear it, then.” Bessie set one old, able hand upon her hip. Johnny fell dramatically to one knee, and in the King’s English, declaimed,

  In the corrupted currents of this world,

  Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice,

  And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself

  Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above:

  There—

  “Imposter!” Bessie interrupted him. “A right fraud ’e is, pullin’ our leg so! Ooh, I’ve a mind to beat ’im right good!” She wagged a finger in his direction.

  “Oh, dear Bessie,” Johnny said. “Forgive me. I couldn’t resist.” He grasped her rough hands and gazed into her watery eyes with his contrite sea-blue ones.

  She forgave him at once, like women everywhere.

  That afternoon, in the sweltering parlor of Harvard President Joseph Willard’s house, Johnny counted twenty-nine boys, all shifting anxiously from foot to foot. Johnny stood in his pressed shirt and breeches, his hair shorn and pomaded, his limbs denuded of trinkets. Aunt Martha had given him a small papered box for their safekeeping. Four at a time were called in for their exams, and Johnny was in the second group of boys. The exams were absurdly easy: simple translations from and to Greek and Latin. Then, one by one, they met briefly with President Willard. The president of Harvard University asked Johnny to do a simple mathematical problem, but when Johnny gave the answer, President Willard bellowed, “Incorrect!”

  “I’m right, sir,” Johnny replied. “Respectfully, I mean.”

  “I’m wrong, am I?”

  Johnny did the sum on a piece of paper, itemized the steps, and handed the paper to President Willard. Willard studied the paper, looked up at Johnny, then waved him away in mock anger.

  “Go on, get out of here.” But he was smiling, and when the president emerged into the foyer, he pulled Eliza aside.

  “Your son is most remarkable. He has a very bright future ahead of him, God willing.”

  Eliza curtsied and thanked him, hiding a smile. It was nothing she didn’t already know.

  They walked back to the Lees’ house in companionable silence. Within, the children did not recognize this sad, plain boy with the short, pomaded hair. They wanted their exotic stranger back.

  “He looks so boring!” Ben exclaimed.

  “I’ll get his beads!” Elizabeth raced off to find the box Johnny had put them in.

  Once they had restored Johnny to a semblance of his former self, they fell upon him for their pony rides.

  5

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, PREPARATIONS FOR COMMENCEMENT BEGAN early for the class of ’94. Over breakfast, Johnny asked if anyone would like to accompany him to it. Harry Lee, munching on a piece of toast before heading off to Boston, frowned and said, “Commencement? I wouldn’t be caught dead in the village just now. Pomp, circumstance, and inebriation, if you ask me.”

  “Well, then, if I may excuse myself, I should like to walk into town.”

  No one wishing to join him, Johnny strolled down the grassy hill to the banks of the river alone. For some time, he watched the white canvas sails drift lazily eastward, toward Boston. Families sat upon blankets or walked the path as children and dogs hurled forward and were repeatedly called back, like bandalores.

  Johnny turned his sights toward town and saw a great impress of activity. Sailcloth tents had been pitched, and vendors worked the gathering crowd, selling all manner of goods, from bottles of eternal youth to Oriental fans. Graduates swayed about in their calico gowns, arm in arm, already tipsy with drink.

  The lively scene reminded Johnny of preparations for Crop Over, a festival that took place in July back home. It was for the slaves, mainly, but Johnny always ran wild through it with his friends. For some of the slave boys, it was their one chance each year to stretch their limbs, dance, and feel alive after deadening months of picking sugar cane.

  The sun was high in the sky when Johnny approached the meetinghouse. Many people were already within, listening to an oration. Johnny peeked in and once more noticed the whiteness of all the faces. There were no gradations of color at all. Their dress was far plainer, too. They all look related, he thought.

  Johnny moved up the road toward the college. He passed a merchant selling enormous pink peaches beside a cage of moistly slithering reptiles. He bought a peach, bit into it, scowled, and threw it to the side of the road: it was mealy and flavorless. Next he passed a rapt crowd who listened to a gray-bearded man in a dusty suit, selling brown bottles of oil. Another man declaimed, “Fat baby here! Come and touch the fat baby!” He pointed to a pyramid of heaving pink flesh upon a three-legged stool; that it was human could barely be discerned. With a shiver of disgust, Johnny moved on.

  At last, just beyond the vendors, the object of his childhood dreams came into view: Harvard University.

  Two buildings presented their flanks to the road. They were made of brick and were simple yet classical in design. Johnny was pleased with their symmetry. The building on the right, he knew, was called Massachusetts Hall. His mother told him that it had been a barracks during the war. The building on the left, Harvard Hall, was nearly identical save for a cupola atop it. This hall housed the commons, a prayer room, and John Harvard’s famous library.

  Moving down the grassy path between them, Johnny found himself in a vast yard. To the left he noticed a very small chapel and a fenced field. To the east was gently rolling farmland dotted with russet-brown cows.

  The children had adorned him with his trinkets after the exams, and he wore them now; but soon, he knew, he would need to remove them for good. He thought with sadness of all those w
ho had given him these trinkets: the old hucksters and fruit sellers and slaves with baskets on their heads. He thought of the slaves in the cane fields, some missing fingers and eyes, or shoes, who always smiled and waved at him as he skipped by. He thought of Madame Pringle’s tavern, which he now knew to be a whorehouse, the ladies who sat about in their finery, whores. Perhaps the women who had given him these gifts were not very good. But on the other hand, he did not see how they were very bad, either. All of them had been kind to him.

  From behind him, Johnny heard a familiar cry. It was fractious, miserable, and nearly human. Facing the entrance to the college stood a tall cage filled with half a dozen crazed gray monkeys. They jumped from post to post, crashing heedlessly into one another.

  These were not the green monkeys of his homeland, the ones that flew across the treetops in great squawking packs. Yet they had the same worried look. For a moment, Johnny thought he would come back under cover of night to set them free. But he could not risk such trouble. He would have liked to, though. It was cruel to keep them caged so.

  Johnny walked back down the street toward the meetinghouse, where commencement was now underway. Before the meetinghouse sat two tutors offering the day’s Order of Exercises.

  “Thank you,” he said as one of them handed him the leaflet. The young man gave him a quizzical stare, and Johnny realized that with his beads and kinky hair, he must have cut a bizarre figure.

  He entered the meetinghouse and looked down at the program. At that moment, a boy named Joseph Perkins was giving his valedictory speech, “On Eloquence.” There would be several poetic verses, and the pageant would close with a discourse upon the topic of “Whether the Discovery of America by the Europeans Has Contributed to the Increase of Human Happiness.” Now that would be interesting to hear. Johnny himself didn’t know the answer, but he thought that in due course he would probably find out.

  6

  July 30, 1794

  THE OLD MAN INSISTED ON PUSHING THE cart uphill himself. He muttered curses under his breath and perspired profusely, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a dirty cuff. Yet his refusal of aid was absolute. This was John Adams, vice president of the United States.

  Johnny recalled how, on the ship, he’d asked his mother if Mr. Adams were very impressive. “I’ll leave you to judge,” she had said. Well, Johnny had been in Quincy for two weeks now, most of that time residing at Peacefield, the Adamses’ residence, and he still had not made up his mind. On the one hand, this was the man who first recognized the need to break from England and whose profound insights into democracy helped to shape the American Constitution. On the other, this stubborn old man urinated on tree stumps and was far too proud to admit when his energy flagged.

  “Why do you stop here, Johnny? You slept till near noon. Surely you can’t be more tired than an old man. Move along now.”

  They resumed their course up the hill, where Adams had long wished to repair a stone wall. A man named Billings and another by the name of Sullivan usually helped them. Two young black boys sometimes helped as well, but today they were alone.

  They worked until the sun was high in the sky. Abigail had packed them a canteen of cider, though Johnny would have preferred tea. He had never acquired a taste for strong drink, though on their crossing that was all he dared to imbibe. Then, seeing that Adams was red in the face and breathing heavily, he stopped once more. This time, Johnny was respectful but firm.

  “Mr. Adams, sir. I should not like to be the cause of the sudden death of the vice president.”

  Adams laughed. “It will take more than a few trips up this hill to dispatch me—a fact that has greatly dismayed my enemies for many a year.”

  “Have you enemies, then?” Johnny asked.

  “Naturally.”

  Johnny asked nothing further, and when he returned with one last barrel of stone, he found the vice president urinating indecorously upon a tuft of blue harebell.

  “Natural weed killing,” Adams said, as he always did, and chuckled. He buttoned his breeches. “Franklin and I often discussed the use of urine in farming, although if I recall, the good doctor was more interested in the relation of the—”

  “Should the rock go just here, sir?” Johnny interrupted. Mrs. Adams would have scolded her husband roundly for such talk. But Johnny suspected that the old man enjoyed these excursions, in part because they released him from the conjugal constraints upon his free speech.

  A bell clanged below. Johnny could almost hear the impatience in its rushing arrhythmia. That was Abigail, calling them to dinner. She had spent many years apart from John and would not countenance an extra five minutes now. Mr. Adams wiped his hands on his worn breeches.

  “I count this a good day’s work, Johnny. Shall we continue tomorrow? I shall get Sullivan and Bass to help.”

  “If you wish it.”

  Before descending, Johnny paused to gaze out over the rocky hills. Directly below him was Peacefield. It was a fine gray clapboard manse with black shutters. To Johnny’s eye, however, it looked quaint and even somewhat rustic. He had not yet grown used to New England’s wooden houses. All the fine homes in Barbados were built of stone.

  Surrounding the main house were a barn, several sheds, and Abigail’s garden, whose brilliantly colored roses prepared to bloom a second time that year. Beyond the farm, due northeast, stood Lizzie’s cottage, where they had stayed but two nights before Mr. Adams insisted that Johnny lodge with them.

  Johnny refused at first, being too intimidated, but his mother said, “Don’t be. He invites you the better to work you to the bone.”

  In the main, it was true, though Johnny would not have traded these past two weeks for anything.

  As they descended the hill, he realized that Mr. Adams had not tested him upon any topic that day, as had been his wont ever since Eliza had boasted, on one of their first evenings in Quincy, that President Willard called Johnny’s exam “an example of profound intuitive intelligence.”

  “Indeed?” Adams had pressed her for more details.

  Eliza was happy to oblige. “Johnny even corrected a mathematical error on the part of Mr. Willard.”

  “Mama,” Johnny objected.

  Almost immediately, Adams had taken it upon himself to continue to examine Johnny, as if he did not entirely trust the opinion of President Willard and would sound the boy himself.

  Now, however, the time for questions had passed; Abigail stood on the porch beside his mother, tapping her right foot impatiently. Johnny was relieved, as Mr. Adams’s questions were more difficult than President Willard’s had been.

  Suddenly Adams stopped and turned to Johnny. He asked, “Tell me, lad, if you would. Ought we to treat with the British?”

  Johnny smiled with relief. This was easy. “Of course,” he said.

  “Why say you so?”

  “No doubt, sir, it is as obvious to you as it is to me. We can’t afford another war with Britain. The Union will not hold. Those who think otherwise are fools.” Johnny then proudly recited a letter, signed by John Adams and addressed to his wife, which he had read that past spring. It had been published in a local Bridgetown paper.

  You cannot imagine what horror Some Persons are in, lest Peace Should continue. The Prospect of Peace throws them into Distress. Their Countenances lengthen at the least opening of an Appearance of It. Glancing Gleams of Joy beam from their Faces whenever all Possibility of it seems to be cut off. You can divine the Secret source of those Feelings as well as I.

  Johnny had been waiting for just such an opportunity to display his gift to Mr. Adams. But instead of being impressed, the old man frowned deeply and moved toward the porch. He kissed his wife, nodded distractedly to Eliza, and scurried on his pudgy legs into the house. He emerged a few minutes later wagging a copy of a letter.

  “Johnny!” Eliza turned to her son. “Whatever have you done to annoy Mr. Adams?”

  “Why, nothing, Mama. He asked me a question, and I answered it.”


  Donning his spectacles, Adams explained, “I have before me a letter I wrote in confidence to my wife, of which I made a single fair copy.”

  Adams read, “You cannot imagine what horror Some Persons are in, lest Peace Should continue . . .”

  Johnny stood before Mr. Adams, head bowed. He felt ashamed, but he didn’t know why.

  Mr. Adams removed his spectacles and folded them. He shook the letter at Johnny. “How came you to know of this letter, son?”

  “It was published in our paper, sir.”

  “Which paper?”

  “The Barbados Mercury. Dated”—he closed his eyes in order better to see the date upon the broadside—“May fourth.”

  “I see. And how came you to know it so to the letter?”

  Now Johnny felt like crying. “I know not how, exactly, sir. I—see it.”

  “You see it,” the old man muttered.

  Eliza intervened. “He has always possessed this talent, Mr. Adams. Since he was quite small.”

  Johnny glanced gratefully at his mother. “Yes, sir. Often, the image fades rather quickly, but not always.”

  Mr. Adams approached the boy and whispered into his ear: “Well, your preternatural memory has just exposed an old friend for a spy. I’m most grateful, child, though it pains me, as must be very plain to you.”

  Johnny didn’t understand. Not entirely. “But sir. How can it be harmful for the British to know you favor a treaty with them?”

  Mr. Adams took the boy by the sleeve and pulled him close. He whispered so that the ladies could not hear, “I don’t give a damn what the British think or suspect. But the Jacobins, I dare say, shall make much of it.”

  “Jacobins, sir?”

  Johnny had not yet heard that current derogatory term for Thomas Jefferson’s new party. He realized he knew almost nothing about the current state of American politics. He would need to study up on it so as not appear a fool before Mr. Adams.

  Seeing the boy’s crestfallen expression, Adams said, “Never mind, lad. There’s time for you to learn what has become of us in your absence. Indeed, I fear, given your quick mind, you shall learn all too soon. Mrs. Adams!” he called suddenly. “We’re starved. What have you for us?”