Beheld

by TaraShea Nesbit

  Tom said, Ah, we have not yet gotten dinner.

  I had the meat pie on the table and offered it.

  Go on, my husband said to Tom, make merry at the meetinghouse.

  What he meant was, make trouble. My husband hated the hypocrites, but did not want to tell Tom we were not invited to dinner.

  Tom smiled. I cannot miss the opportunity to see them squirm. He patted my husband’s shoulder, stood, and said, I shall join you after.

  Tom slid a flask from his cloak and slipped it to my husband. Just the thing to celebrate with when I get back, Tom said, and walked out the door to the meetinghouse.

  My husband took a long sip, then brought down his musket from the wall.

  Where are ye going with the gun, John?

  The woods, he said.

  Going to shoot some hypocrites? I said. It was a joke.

  Tomorrow. Tonight, deer.

  But I have pie.

  He had set his mind on deer, though, and would not be persuaded otherwise.

  A bit late for that, I called, as he walked away from the house.

  John Billington

  It would be hours before his dinner if he wished for deer, but that was his wish, and so few of them went fulfilled that he would allow this one. His stomach ached, shrunk inward by the eight hours he had gone without.

  He came upon the crowd forming on the two roads to the meetinghouse. All those hypocrites, smiling and laughing, their bellies soon to be full. The smell of venison wafted over to him.

  You have it nicely here, don’t you, Master Billington? said a voice behind him.

  John Billington turned to see Thomas Weston. Weston was a compact man and the errant white strands of hair were one of the few things that revealed his age. His chin jutted out, which gave the impression of being slightly perturbed, a physical feature that benefited him in negotiation.

  Your letter caused quite the stir amongst investors.

  John Billington let the barrel of his gun touch the ground and leaned against it. The drinks with Tom had left him more unsteady than he realized. He paused before replying.

  We signed away seven years to be in Virginia, amongst English people. Not these devils, disguising themselves as devout.

  You are a landowner, are you not, Master Billington?

  John Billington looked away.

  Quite a step up from London, eh? There you’d be in debtors’ prison or more likely dead. If I were you I would count your blessings.

  You know what you promised us.

  So you want me to take you back?

  John Billington shifted his weight off of his gun.

  As I am sure you know, Master Weston, Bradford burned down Morton’s house. For trading fur better than he could. Of course Bradford lied and blamed the house-burning on Morton’s merrymaking. Hypocrites, murdering and destroying property as it suits them. Sundays here you would think the town had the plague.

  Weston was smiling.

  Are you saying you wish to sell your land and go back to London, Master Billington?

  You knew they were going to take us north, not to Virginia.

  I agree it is not fertile land, won’t get you much, but if you need it taken off your hands … Might pay for you and your family to return.

  For the work I’ve done here, you should have paid me. My son dead.

  John Billington was not keeping the promise he made with himself to stop letting these people bother him.

  My whole family nearly died, and you’ve yet to acknowledge your lies. Sold those children to those hypocrites. Two years old, that youngest. You’ll do anything for a profit, but what will a profit do for you in the afterlife, Master Weston?

  If Billington’s claims had an effect on Weston, no one observing Weston could have seen it.

  So you want me to take you back?

  John Billington stared at Weston.

  In a flat voice, Weston said, What do you want. It was not a question.

  Billington adjusted the weight of his gun.

  You know what I want. I’ve said it.

  Myles Standish stood in the doorway of the meetinghouse. The crowd was filing inside. Thomas Weston looked over to him.

  What I want, Master Weston, is an admission and an apology. Tell the truth and be absolved from your sins. You knew where you were sending us.

  Dinner, Standish called to Weston, his voice a little higher than usual. He did not set his eyes upon Billington.

  As if Billington had not spoken, Thomas Weston said, Good day, Master Billington, and started toward the meetinghouse.

  You are a lying rascal and a rogue, Thomas Weston, Billington called out.

  Weston turned. He walked back to Billington and only stopped when he was close enough to bite Billington’s ear.

  Listen, you knave. I could have you dead by nightfall. No one here would know who did it and every single person in this colony would celebrate.

  Weston adjusted his cuffs. Nay, you are not worth the gunpowder it would take.

  Weston then called to Standish, What have your fine women prepared for us? and strode into the meetinghouse.

  John Billington walked quickly past, tipped his hat to the guards, moved through the palisade, then out, at last, past Plymouth proper and in the open air of his property, where he could think.

  Dumping out their shitty chamber pots, burying their dead, thatching their roofs before he had finished his own, had he not given them enough? Had he not done enough, for seven years as their servant? No, it seemed, he hadn’t. He would always be a servant, always be the man—barely a man—they told what to do. Had he not tired his back and arms building their houses by day, then dragged himself to his small square of dirt and hammered at night on his own? Chopped their firewood, as they demanded, before his own, poured their beer before his own, ate only the table scraps they deigned to give him. Indentured servitude was stale bread and watery stew they fed him last. He had lost a stone that first year from the labor. It would have been better if more of them had died. He had risked, in caring for them, dying himself. Still they called him the most lascivious man, patriarch of the most profane family. Those precisionists believed in God’s plan and though they claimed no one knew who God chose, who were His Elect, you could see it on their faces, how much they thought it was themselves, who were chosen, how much they thought God would never choose a man like himself, a John Billington. But maybe it was he who was chosen, if there were such a thing. Maybe it was him. God had not killed him, not yet, and wasn’t that a sign of God’s favor, Captain Shrimp? A sign of God’s good grace, Governor Bradford? Billington kicked up a heavy stone with his boot. Nay, nay, he would always be below them.

  He would go again to Standish. This evening, in front of the newcomers. He would demand Shrimp give him the land he was due.

  Alice Bradford

  For the evening meal, we gave the newcomers more food from the storehouse than we gave ourselves. The high oak beams of the meetinghouse were grand, I thought, in their simplicity. We women pushed the tables together for the occasion and decorated each with a pitcher of sweet goldenrod. We placed our venison pies, soft cheeses, salad herbs, corn meal boiled with dried peas, loaves of bread, and generous amounts of butter atop the tables.

  My husband gave a speech, welcoming the newcomers. One butterfly followed the flowers into the room and fluttered around my husband as he spoke. I smiled at the kind of sign this could be.

  And some, he said, not so new, and motioned to Thomas Morton.

  The congregants in the crowd chuckled with unease. Morton smiled. Before dinner, back at home, my husband had voiced fury with Weston for bringing Thomas Morton back. Weston claimed he had not known of Morton’s banishment.

  Water under the bridge, Bradford. Give him another chance. As an Englishman, he does improve relations with the Indians, Weston had said.

  Our elder, William Brewster, stood. He was our lay minster most of these past ten years, for we could not find a suitable priest for
Plymouth.

  Let us pray, he said, and bowed his head, leading us in a blessing of the food, and thankfulness to God’s bounty, so that it might protect and nourish us.

  I prayed, too, that these newcomers would not cause as much trouble as I feared they would. I was reminded again of what Pastor Robinson had said when my husband wrote to him proudly about the deaths of Massachusett men. Once there is bloodshed, there will be more. I wished he had not been right in this, as he so often was.

  The Billingtons absence was unnoticed, or noticed only in its relief. I offered my new stepson a plate and ale before the other children. The seamen sat together at one table, hulking over their food, few with napkins over their shoulders. I thought of a boy and his mother I had seen on the dock before I boarded the Anne. The mother said, Be of good courage, and slipped a red cap upon his head. Her son loped off, new seaman that he was, and only then, privately, did she turn her head and wipe her tears away. Somebody loves us all. Not only God, but someone earthly, too. Or did, anyway. The seamen’s uncouth ways were not, when thought of this way, a bother to me.

  Weston had a seat next to my husband, and beside him, Elder Brewster, and then Susanna’s husband. Thomas Morton and the seamen were already getting seconds of ale and meat before I had taken my first bite. The butter was down to slivers. We women ate together with the children, taking less than what our bellies wished for, hopeful some would be left over. There never was.

  After their ale and with bellies warmed, and after my husband’s prayer for what we had consumed, the men’s laughter grew. I watched the dirty bowls pile up on tables not abandoned. In the center of the room the elders talked. I imagined they spoke of money. Debts. I perceived a growing tension at my husband’s table by the way Elder Brewster’s arms were folded. William had told me before dinner how few provisions Weston had brought over with the newcomers. I worried the state of our affairs was dire, but sitting there worrying would do nothing. There was a meetinghouse to clean. I took up three empty pitchers and asked the women who would like to join me. Elizabeth stood. I left Joseph sleeping in his Moses basket next to his father. Mercy and William the younger were amongst the other children—William playing jacks and Mercy twirling together stems of wild flowers. Elizabeth and I set out for the brook.

  As safe as I felt in Plymouth, there was stillness in that path, and the sound of the water prevented me from hearing other sounds, which left me unsettled. Had I known what fates were being made there in the forest that night, I would have avoided the brook. The cleaning could have waited.

  Nature

  In summer, all that is green hushes that which is not. Sassafras bend their necks in the wind. A box turtle hatchling takes her first stride. A shrew makes a squeak only his kind can hear. A snake unhinges his jaw around the shrew. Three white-tailed deer graze in an open field, father, mother, and a child on wobbly legs.

  There is the flora and there is the fauna. The leaves of a fern unfurl. The petals of rose gentian, summer’s arrival, pink on a yellow center, are delicate and dead on the pond shore. Dew drops from golden aster.

  At the pond shore, the cardinal flower. At the pond shore, boneset, Joe Pye weed, goldenrod. In the fields, milkweed. In the fields, butterfly weed. Golden asters sunning themselves. The flat grass of deer beds. In the fields, goldenrod in bloom. Lupine petals dry on the forest floor. On the forest floor, partridge berry. On the forest floor, tea berry. In the dry sun, sweet fern. In the fields, switch grass.

  At the fields’ edges, the wolves. They give a chorus howl, rallying one another. The dinner death-dance has begun.

  In early evening, the deer, too, are hungry. They have survived a whole day from predators. But still, there is the evening to live through. The light is low. A white-tailed deer turns her ears. A sound echoes through the trees, but in summer, the trees full and green with leaves, the sound of a musket shot is dampened. Barn owls, tawny owls, magpies, hawks, jackdaws, and snakes, all seeking food. Along the roadside, the wolf traps set out by the colonists, and the wolf pack running forward.

  Alice Bradford

  Up the hill we went, the pitchers swinging by our sides. At forty, I could see new ways I had lived my life ungodly. Not in big deeds—not murder, nor gluttony, nor sloth—but in the wish to never make another person feel ill-suited. In my hope for others’ comfort, I missed something far greater: honesty. It was easier to speak about others, as Susanna did, or talk about the pragmatic qualities of our daily lives in Plymouth—the women’s schedule of mending, washing, milking, cooking, feeding, gardening, mothering, as I did with Elizabeth, then to call one another toward something deeper.

  Elizabeth and I had reached the water. We washed our hands. We filled up the pitchers. I appreciated the two of us quietly working together.

  I liked Elizabeth, but I missed Dorothy. Wishing to bring her into the space betwixt us, I inquired of Elizabeth what she recalled of Dorothy.

  Elizabeth peered at the ground, as if reading the grass for signs.

  She didn’t seem well, she said. It became more pronounced the longer we were on the ship.

  I wanted to tell her of the sadness in Dorothy I witnessed, but there was no place to begin. I kept quiet.

  There was a boy. Jasper. The youngest of the Mores.

  I knew the children she spoke of, sent away by their father without their mother’s knowledge, and given to us by Weston, along with a sum from their uncle. Their father wanted to rise in politics. Lord Zouche had said, If you can’t take care of your home, how do you expect the King to think you can take care of the country? He needed to get rid of them to increase his standing.

  By the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and thirty, Richard More was twelve, in William Brewster’s care, and had recently fulfilled his indentured servitude. But as there was no parent or sibling to care for him, he still lived with Brewster as his servant.

  Quieter than Richard, almost of a different stock. A sweet boy. She took to him. And when he perished she—did not take it well.

  Elizabeth picked at her cuticle. I understood that this was all she would say. From those few words I would have to piece together all that they implied.

  She asked my opinion of how the dinner went and what I thought of the new arrivals. I let the conversation shift.

  How was Master Morton permitted back?

  Further punishment, I imagine.

  I didn’t know. My husband was furious about it, but my role was to instill confidence.

  We were turning back toward the colony when a shot rang out. A sound not from the colony, but beyond the fences, where we were. A close-by sound.

  When I heard it I thought, I do not want to die.

  A musket.

  Indians, I thought. An Indian attack.

  As fast as we could, we ran back toward whence we had come. Through the darkening footpath, our pitchers sloshing, to our husbands at the meetinghouse.

  Newcomen

  In the clearing, then through it, at the water.

  Jim, a voice said.

  John Newcomen turned his head. He saw the dull tip of a musket.

  He’ll kill me without knowing my name, Newcomen thought.

  Jim, John Billington said. Have another look.

  He’d come this far, across the Atlantic. Survived seven weeks at sea. Had not died from storm, pirates, the seamen’s illness. Now, this man. For a single acre.

  Newcomen closed his eyes.

  The sunlight dappled through fluttering leaves, which he could see though his eyes were shut. He’d left Eugenia in her good summer dress, the wind blowing. Eugenia at the top of the hill, the smile she gave him in recognition. How he preferred to watch her when she did not know he was looking.

  His mother’s hand across his forehead, her worried expression when he had a fever. The time she took him to see the geese in their grand flight south.

  Newcomen turned to Billington to try to say anything to pardon himself from this wild man’s whims.

  Then a
deep inward plunge, the face of his stepfather, glassy-eyed with drink, pulling him from his bed, and under it, into a hole whose depths were boundless.

  John Billington

  Billington jabbed the barrel of the gun into the thin ligaments of Newcomen’s neck.

  Not a move, Billington said, and slid the gun barrel down the man’s spine. He took two paces back.

  There was a twitch of the neck, or a movement, or perhaps John Billington was seeing things. His eyes registered motion.

  He pulled the trigger.

  The shot echoed off trees and startled the birds. Three deer bounded toward the brook. The beavers dipped into the water, swam farther upstream, going against the current as fast as they could.

  He’d done it, hadn’t he, Billington? Under pressure, he was. The elders’ curse against him had proven them right. A body of a newcomer, dead.

  At the shot, he himself jumped. He knew his rifle, its work on deer and geese and even beavers, though the shot ruined the pelt. He knew his rifle but not the man before him, nor the weight of fifteen stones he would now have to drag across the forest to somewhere.

  Was his name not Jim?

  He could call for help. Say an Indian had done this or say he’d seen him fall. That would cause a fine stir in Governor William Bradford, now wouldn’t it?

  The forest was indifferent, as indifferent as it had been when Bradford ordered the men to drag the dying colonists’ bodies out into the woods, prop them up against trees, and put muskets in their arms so that Plymouth appeared to have far more healthy colonists than it did.

  Nature did not notice.

  John Billington paced. Three birds flew out from a pine tree. He heard the rustling of a larger animal making haste away. Then the wind and just him, Billington, alone with a dead man, blood blooming through his tunic.

  Aye, no one would say this was an accident. Certainly not Bradford, who had it out for him, ever since he’d refused to move on the Mayflower and give his space over. One must challenge men who think they are better than the rest. It all could be blamed on these wretched puritans, ruining courageous adventurers such as himself.