Last Refuge of Scoundrels

by Paul Lussier

  These were the thoughts running through my head as I approached Hancock’s home, comparing the consequences of failing Billingsley to being caught by Hancock. Since in both cases I assumed I’d be killed, the decision mostly involved selecting the way I preferred to go—whether torture would be involved, how quickly I’d be allowed to expire . . .

  I ultimately decided to throw my lot in with Hancock, to tell him of the heinous Tory plot against him. I figured death-by-Hancock would involve too many questions and, especially if Sam Adams were present, be too brutal.

  My decision wasn’t entirely self-serving, however. I remember thinking, as I threaded my way to Beacon Hill through the Common, how sad it would be if this plan of Mein’s ever worked. How discomfiting it would be to all those innocent, flax-clad, non-tea drinking, only-locally-grown-vegetable-and-fruit-eating families who had suffered loss of employment from the closed shops and the empty wharves, who had found themselves drawn into battle with once-beloved neighbors based on boycott participation—or not—to discover that these sacrifices had never been necessary or effective at all.

  September 5, 1769, ten P.M. By now I was on Hancock’s property, eyeing his front door (huge and forbidding) and reviewing my plan one last time from my hiding place behind a convenient boxwood.

  I decided I would knock twice only, counting to sixty in between. I would introduce myself as a student of Harvard, Hancock’s alma mater, and presumably be invited inside. For the first few minutes I would speak only of nostalgic college stories (a prospect every bit as challenging as stealing files, as I had none to tell). A few minutes more and he’d offer me a nice glass of fine (presumably smuggled) sherry. Once settled cozily before the fire (I know it was September, but the image of the fire gave me some nerve), I would silently apologize to God one more time for having cursed him four years ago and then go all out: spill my guts, tell Hancock everything I knew about Mein and his terrible plan, and be prepared to bolt if need be.

  I would give no credence, of course, to Mein’s suspicions, just explain that I felt bound to inform Hancock of the plot. Only if required, for purposes of verification, would I reveal my part in it. Then, if things went well, as I hoped they would, he would offer me more of the sherry and confide in me his counterplan to ruin Mein and his stooge, Billingsley, once and for all. Good. Very good.

  I walked up to the door.

  I grasped the enormous knocker and banged it once. Then once again.

  “. . . fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine . . .”

  Nothing.

  I paced. I wrung my hands. I pissed behind a fruit tree. In the back of the house a cow eyed me stupidly and I stuck my tongue out at her.

  I broke my rule, hoisted the knocker one last time . . . and suddenly felt myself swinging through space.

  I watched my warped reflection in polished brass clinging to the door knocker for dear life just as Hancock’s gold-knobbed cane came smashing down on my head.

  “Begone, beggar, begone!” (I knew I never should have sported the damned homespun.)

  Dazed for a second, I lay on the ground, blood streaming down my face, and opened my eyes. A comet of pinkish blue streaked across the night sky.

  And there she was. Deborah. She stepped from the back of the house, cloaked in black from head to toe, and slipped through an alley, a black speck come and gone in the blink of an eye. Had I really seen her?

  Hancock, satisfied that if I’d come for money I’d never do so again, whisked himself away and into a carriage.

  I shouted after Deborah, but she didn’t break her stride.

  And so I heaved myself up and, dripping blood, bent over and, reeling, gave chase.

  She picked up her pace, dashing left, right, left again. Yes, she was running away . . . for now, but to a place that ultimately would bring us together again, guiding me, inevitably, into that Philadelphia cave where, together, we’d plot the changing of the world.

  Down Tremont, onto King, zigzagging to Cornhill, and past the statehouse, where she disappeared. ’Round and ’round the streets I twisted, bellowing “Deboraaaaah!” to no avail. No sign of her, just darkness all around, her cloak become one with the dark of night—no light posts, no fires, no comet, barely a moon.

  I was lost, utterly without bearing, not so much as a recognizable wall to guide me. I felt empty, hollowed out, yet curiously alive. I clutched my side and gasped for air.

  And then, a few odd sounds.

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Followed by just a few words, mumbled, that I couldn’t make out.

  “Hello?” I called out. My greeting sank into the darkness. There it was again: Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Then three words: “Who goes there?” followed by: Rattattattattattatat . . .

  A stick, that’s what it was. No, a cane; a cane that was being rapped with panic against the walk.

  “Pray, speak now. Or I shall start swinging!” the voice rasped. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh!

  But I had had quite enough of walking sticks that night. I tried jumping out of the way and shouted, “I’m lost and without malice. . . . Please—”

  The swinging stopped instantly.

  “Step toward me then, and state your business.”

  I did as bidden. Oh, what a strange world this Boston was.

  “John Lawrence, sir.” (I’d at least determined the speaker was a man.) “I was—uh . . .” I hadn’t the slightest idea how to explain what I was doing or why. Where would I begin? As it turned out, this didn’t much matter because it was quite clear that the gentleman of the dark wasn’t talking to me anyway. He was now addressing a wall.

  “I demand satisfaction!” he yelled at it. And again, “State your business!”

  I could just make him out by the flicker of a tar-barrel.

  He was James Otis himself—the mad barrister, sweating, scowling, and flushed with rage. He shook his stick at what wasn’t a wall after all but a door, the front entrance to the Royal Coffee House—a Tory hangout if ever there was one.

  As he stepped nearer the lantern at the entrance, a flicker of flame illumined his eyes. Red, beady, bulging, they were the eyes of a madman. My Lord, the eyes of Apollo too—that ancient gaze of hers. And his breath, reeking of spirits, was the dragon’s fire. My heart pounded. I followed Otis inside.

  “Satisfaction!” he cried as he crashed with a flourish into the tavern.

  The place went still.

  From the corner, a few titters. Then, “What satisfaction would you have, Mr. Otis?” from the far corner.

  “A gentleman’s satisfaction!” Otis barked back.

  “Well, I am ready to give it!” was the answer.

  From across the room, Customs Officer James Robinson, a notorious Loyalist lackey, mockingly waved Otis to his table and poured him a drink. But Otis, already well fortified, righteously explained that he wanted his due for Robinson’s recent public declaration that Otis was a traitor to his country and an enemy of the king.

  “Pray, be my guest, sir,” Robinson said with a smile as he leaned back in his chair, his feet on the table.

  But Otis wasn’t interested in defending himself or attacking Robinson. He wanted simply to be understood.

  “I am and ever have been a Tory,” he stated simply and soberly. So far, so good. Robinson looked mollified.

  “On the other hand, if to stand for the rights of men is to be characteristic of a Whig, I hope I am, and ever shall be, a Whig.”

  I felt as though a breeze were coming through an open door.

  “I profess, however, to be not devoted to any party, but that of Truth and Reason, which I think I am ready to embrace wherever I find them.”

  Robinson swung his legs down and sat up.

  Otis went on: “You may ruin yourselves, but you cannot in the end ruin the colonies. We have been a free people, and if you will not let us remain so any longer—”

  For a while the white-knuckled Tory merchants simply looked on from their tufted chairs by the fire, their servants crouched on th
e filthy floor, while Otis went on to explain with his own inimitable logic that the privileges of the people were more dear than the most valuable prerogatives of the crown.

  “Let the consequences be what they will,” he cried. “In this vein I am determined to proceed! I will be neither Tory nor Whig!”

  The breeze I was feeling came from Otis’s words alone. It was hearing the truth spoken, as enlivening to me as it was unnerving to the crowd.

  If Otis had gone into that bar to defend his honor and had declared his allegiance to one side or the other, he probably would have walked out unscathed.

  But Robinson slowly rose and, in a low voice, said, “To be a friend of this country, sir, and a friend of the king, these are not one and the same.”

  A tankard fell to the floor. Someone screamed. And suddenly the crowd fell upon Otis—much as my father, back home, had fallen upon me—beating him with their sticks, fists, boots, and canes. And as I watched, I knew they didn’t want to kill Otis any more than my father had been intent on killing me. They wanted what Henry Lawrence wanted: for this glimpse of the future—a world neither Loyalist nor Patriot, just fair—to be made to go away.

  Three well-dressed gentlemen carried Otis to the back of the bar and, pinning him to the wall, beat him until he was hatless, wigless, and blinded by his own blood. They left him in a heap on the floor. I knelt down to him.

  “Son,” was all he said, quietly.

  I’d never been addressed with such affection in my life. I grabbed hold of Otis’s arms and, slicing my way through the crowd, dragged him across the floor and out to the street, fending off a trail of assailants and flying objects as best I could.

  “Son,” he said again, once outside.

  I struggled to sit him up against the hitching post where the light through the tavern doorway would enable me to assess his wounds. There was a hole in his head big enough to fit my two fingers. I tried to plug the outrush of blood.

  He clasped my hand tight and refused to let go, just as my father had done once so many years ago. Except Otis, I knew, would never, ever ask me to lie about this moment.

  “Help! Help! Help!” I screamed, splitting the night wide open as Robinson advanced.

  And suddenly . . . a miracle.

  Up from the dark came a supernatural slew of arms and hands whisking Otis up onto their shoulders and away. Arms thick, muscled, scaled, and scarred. Arms of jack-tars and seamen, barmaids and whores who had been watching Otis from the dark, waiting and ready to protect him and, failing that, to carry him home.

  Too afraid to declare for themselves, perhaps, to fight Otis’s enemies hand to hand (just now). But nonetheless willing, able, and eager to hold out their arms for him.

  It was love.

  Seeing the ragged reinforcements advance, Robinson and his cadre withdrew.

  I knew then I would never return to Harvard. Here, finally, was everything I’d come to Boston for.

  Here was reason.

  Here was respect.

  Here was truth.

  Here, somewhere, was Deborah, at long last.

  All night long, back at his home, Otis still would not let me go, continuing over and over again to call me “son.” I decided I didn’t care a whit that he wasn’t my flesh and blood. So the next morning, when Samuel Adams and the rest visited (Hancock displaying no recognition of me whatsoever) and Otis introduced me as his long-lost son, I went along, presenting myself as “Papa’s secretary,” which nobody, for fear of inflaming Otis, bothered to contradict.

  For when Otis called me “son,” he meant it, and that was good enough for me.

  CHAPTER 12

  Boston Massacre

  Anybody who thinks that the Boston Massacre, the event which more than any other put us on the path to war, was a spontaneous, unprompted assault upon the people is wrong. And those few brave, irreverent souls who have insisted it was all part of Sam Adams’s plan (goad the troops into firing upon innocent Americans to prompt a furor that would get these soldiers gone) are wrong, too. Although at least this last interpretation carries with it a degree of truth: Sam Adams did plan the Massacre in advance—every shot, every rock, every curse. I know. I was there.

  But along the way, like the men, women, and children who came out of the shadows that night to save Otis, like Deborah, who had instantaneously emerged and just as swiftly disappeared (five months ago now), something else happened that no one could have predicted, its meaning elusive but profound. In February 1770 I watched as up from the darkness what began as an insidious project to dislodge soldiers from Boston wound up exposing an intractable class divide here in America, which after the incident would never be forgotten.

  And while History stubbornly heralds the 1770 Massacre in which “British soldiers fired upon innocent Americans” for presaging the fight for freedom and delivering the message to England to “Get lost!” that position, while inspiring, bears no relationship whatsoever to what the Massacre actually was: proof positive that Americans would have to come together first in order to fight England, and that, at present, we were indeed a “sorry, contentious lot.”

  It wasn’t long before I was convinced that had I not fallen into Otis’s life, he probably would have been bound and gagged, declared non compos mentis, and run out of town even sooner than he was—probably by his fellow libertarians, no less.

  Oh, sure. These men called each other names and behind the scenes bickered like old dames. But none of the insults—like “cheesehead,” “loathsome fuck,” “no-brains,” “tiny prick” filling the air like gnats and just as irritating, just as routine—could hold a candle to the wrath Samuel Adams harbored for Otis.

  Although there was ample distrust between the two men based on principle and sound argument alone (whether or not the boycott should be abandoned, whether to malign the king himself or Parliament—things like that), Sam Adams seemed to reserve the better part of his dislike for Otis as an entirely personal vendetta. It was simple: This business of Otis being carried to safety on the shoulders of seamen and the poor was more than Adams could bear. Begrudging Otis the popularity such a rescue implied—popularity he’d been gauging for months—Sam Adams gave him no quarter whatsoever, denouncing him as a constitutionalist and, worse, monarchical, not to mention insane. And while Otis was down for the count, Adams plotted ways to turn that situation around, to steer favorable opinion his way.

  What to do? . . . Well, the issue of putting all those pesky British soldiers on a boat and sending them home—that might work, if the success of the Journal of Occurrences could be taken as any indication of the way to peoples’ hearts. But here Adams had to be very careful, for should he go out on a limb publicly advocating for the position that the soldiers must, at once, return home and then find that the issue, for whatever reason, didn’t resonate with the people, he’d be worse off than he was now. Not just fading, failed. Fine, then, he’d make it his personal responsibility to make sure the issue took, that more than anything the people would want the goddamned soldiers run out of town.

  Easier said than done. . . .

  While there had been a definite hostility generated down at the wharf when off-duty Redcoats were hired over Yanks due to their willingness to work for mere pennies, the truth of the matter was that for this dangerous trend the shopkeepers and ropemakers should have been held every bit as accountable as the Redcoats. For the crime of working for wages no one else would accept, a few soldiers on guard had been jostled off bridges and pushed off wharves. Some had been followed and taunted by small boys goading them with forks and chanting “Lobsters for sale!” but none of that had amounted to much. And as for the furor over the quartering of soldiers that, for all practical purposes, had by 1770 settled down to a low boil. Even the soldiers, under strict orders not to avenge their civilian tormentors, mostly deserted in droves rather than retaliate (punishment for which was being shot unblindfolded in broad daylight in the center of the Common).

  Of course, the citizen
ry didn’t like the soldiers; but still, until Sam Adams published all those horrible stories about them in the Journal and the Gazette, they were mostly apathetic. Adams had to seize upon whatever emotional ore he could mine. There was, after all, a climate of fear about town—whether one held the Sons of Liberty or the Redcoats to blame. Why, just last month an eleven-year-old boy had been felled by gunfire, and since that time a curfew had been imposed. People were rumored to be sleeping with guns under their pillows and walking to market with knives . . . hmmm.

  Adams calculated adroitly that a group of British soldiers caught between a carefully chosen rock and a well-timed hard place would provide the perfect foil for this fear. All he needed to do was set the stage properly for a well-managed disaster that, had England heeded Samuel Adams’s warnings, could have been prevented.

  In the most Machiavellian sense, it was a great idea. But when he went so far as to suggest a time and a date for this “inevitable massacre” and tipped his hand, I thought he’d also exposed his private ambition.

  He actually had small boys out there posting broadsides, giving a location for people to gather and meet to stave off the siege he was “dead certain” the Redcoats had planned.

  Of course, you’d think that if the British really were plotting an invasion of some sort, if six hundred soldiers were intending a campaign against sixteen thousand people and Samuel Adams was known to have discovered their schedule, at the first sign of Adams’s posted broadsides they might, at the very least, alter their plans. So one had to wonder who was more stupid—Adams for giving the British advance notice of what he knew, or the people for falling for it. Or, for that matter, the British, for showing up smack on time for bloodshed as Adams had warned.

  Otis was out of his mind—that was no surprise—but this time with worry. He warned Adams repeatedly that no good would come of this plot, but Adams, on a tear, threatened to have him committed if he didn’t shut his trap.