by Ron Carter
He paused to let his breathing settle, then continued. “Last Sunday after church we talked of heaven. Do you remember?”
“I remember.” She raised his hand to her face and she kissed it and held it close.
“In my heart, I know some things that I dared not speak until now. I do not believe we are angels when we go to heaven. I do not believe we will spend eternity singing praises to God.”
Margaret listened in startled silence.
“There will be no heaven for me without you. You and the children. I believe I will have you in heaven, and the children, and we will continue there as we are here, a husband and wife, and we will have our family. I cannot believe a just and kindly God would ever separate us. He would not do that.”
Margaret’s breath came short. “That is not the teaching.”
“It is the teaching of every right thing inside of me! I know as I know I am here ready to leave this life that it is true, Margaret. I cannot bear the thought of being in eternity without you. That would be a torment I could not bear! I know it! I know it!”
He paused and wiped at his mouth, and the exertion left him panting for a moment before he could continue. “There is one more thing. The battle yesterday was necessary to the plan of God for this land. I know only a small part of the plan, but it is there. We had to fight that battle. Something is stirring in these colonies. A new spirit, a new feeling, a new direction for the world. Something will happen soon, something that will change this world forever. I don’t know what it is, but it will happen.”
His hand tightened on hers for a moment, then relaxed, and she felt his fingers begin to slip away. He licked his lips and forced his eyes to focus once more.
“I had to be part of it. Something inside. I had to do it. I would do it again. Can you forgive me?”
In the deepest chamber of her soul, where she lived alone with her conscience and her God, Margaret felt a stirring. It was as though a voice spoke to her quietly from within but the words could be heard in the room.
“Peace. My peace, not as the world.”
A calmness came flowing, and a sense of peace she had never felt before spread from her heart and filled her and then reached beyond, into the room. Her breathing slowed and she looked about, and it seemed there was a brightness in the room beyond the sun streaming in the window. She looked into John’s face and he was smiling and he was radiant.
“There is nothing to forgive,” she said quietly. “You were doing His work.”
She leaned over him and she took his face in her hands and she kissed him, and she put her cheek against his and said, “I love you.” She felt his hand rise to touch her face and she drew back and he looked into her eyes.
“Thank you.” His voice was faint and fading. “Thank you.”
While she watched, his eyes shifted and he looked towards the far end of the room, and suddenly his eyes narrowed and he tried to speak. She leaned forward to listen, and she heard the whispered words, “You came!”
Slowly she turned and looked and she could see nothing, and she turned back to John. His eyes were fixed on someone, and she saw a joy in his face that defied all description. He sighed and the air left his body and his hand relaxed and she felt his life slip from him.
Margaret sat quietly at his side for a long time, aware only that inside the room was a peace and joy that transcended anything she had ever known. She had never seen happiness as she now saw it in John’s face. Time passed, and it slowly began to withdraw, and she felt the deepest yearning of her life to seize it and never let it go, but it was beyond her power.
She gently reached to close John’s eyes and then stood. For a moment she looked down at him, and she knew she would give all she had, all she was, to once again capture the peace and the joy she had felt.
She walked to the door and into the parlor.
“Children, come and see your father. Tom, you come with them.”
Saturday, April 22, 1775
Chapter XVII
* * *
Thick fog rolled in from the Atlantic during the night, and in the early morning a cold, thin drizzle of misty rain settled in. The heavens were a heavy, oppressive gray blanket, sealing out the sunrise, and Boston City wakened to dark, wet, somber streets. Only the necessary traffic moved, quick, anxious, while citizens stared from rain-streaked windows and disappeared when the silent, narrow-eyed British patrols came stamping in the rain- puddled streets. No birds sang; no squirrels chattered; no one called the usual carefree Saturday morning salutations in the strangely quiet city.
For three nights and two days both the British and the colonials had left the city with an unending stream of wagons or carriages or any vehicle they could find, to return later from the Concord Road with more of their dead and wounded. Every hospital room within ten miles was filled by midnight of April nineteenth. The enlisted men’s barracks at the British military compound were jammed to the walls with wounded, and the dispossessed men slept in tents on the parade ground. Every church in Boston and Charlestown had been stripped of the pews and filled with cots. Every medical doctor, nurse, and orderly that could be found had been pressed into service. Wounded colonials were bedded in homes scattered for miles. By dawn of April twentieth every opiate and medicine in Boston and Charlestown had been used to dull the pain of amputations and stitching and probing for lead balls inside writhing bodies, and by order of General Gage the medicines and medical doctors on board every man-of-war in Boston Harbor and the Back Bay had been commandeered ashore. The colonials had taken every doctor and all medicines from every merchant ship they could find, no questions asked. Grave diggers had been busy in every available cemetery without ceasing, by light of day and by light of lantern at night. In an almost unending processional, clusters of silent people dressed in black moved through the streets to the graveyards, where they conducted brief graveside services, lowered the caskets, and quickly returned home to remain behind closed doors.
An unspoken, undefined truce had settled into place between the British and the colonials, born of desperate need on both sides.
The British command was utterly devastated, shattered by the unthinkable realization that a ragtag army of colonial farmers and merchants had met the flower of the proud British army head-on and had not just defeated them but chopped them to pieces in an eighteen-mile running ambush that by definition could be termed a massacre. General Gage knew that had the colonials been given three more hours of daylight on April nineteenth, not one British soldier returning from Concord would have reached Charlestown. Numbed, paralyzed, the British command was terrified that if they brought reprisals in the city, that same ragtag army, whom they now knew to be without fear, would swarm the Boston Peninsula and leave no soldier or sailor alive.
The colonials were overwhelmed by what they had done. Untested, untried, they had taken on the regulars with no advance hint of whether they or the army would take a beating, and they had nearly annihilated the army. With the battle now three days behind them, they were struggling with two questions. First, if the war continued, could they repeat their performance, or was it a colossal freak accident resulting from surprise? Second, with enough gunboats and cannon in the waters around Charlestown and Boston to level both towns in forty-eight hours, would the British turn their firepower loose on the two towns? Tweaking the nose of a giant could bring disaster.
And both sides needed time to minister to their wounded and conduct the somber business of burying their dead. Thus it was that both sides silently walked the streets of Boston in the chill fog and drizzle of rain on that Saturday morning, to do what they must. Their faces were set, eyes flat as they met and silently passed each other, each fearful, tentative, neither side willing to provoke a confrontation.
In the quiet of her bedroom, Kathleen Thorpe finished buttoning her shoes, flounced her skirt to settle it, and peered into her mirror for a moment. She saw the faint shadows beneath her eyes from tormented days and sleepless nights. She took
her hooded rain cape from her closet and slipped it around her shoulders as she walked out into the parlor and stopped beside the sofa where Phoebe lay against pillows with a quilt tucked about her.
“I’m going out for food. I’ll be back in less than an hour. Will you be all right?”
Phoebe nodded weakly.
Kathleen turned to Charles, standing in the kitchen doorway, Faith behind him. “You and Faith be quiet and don’t disturb Mother. Read a book to Faith if she needs it. Understand?”
Charles’s face darkened and he asked, “Are you going? Why do you have to go?”
Kathleen saw the fear in his eyes. For Charles and Faith, the world had come crashing down when their father was arrested in the night. They could not understand why he was gone, or why their mother now seldom rose from the bed or sofa and could dissolve into tears at any time, or why their lifelong schoolmates called them strange names and shunned them. They only understood that Kathleen had become the center of their world—meals, washing, ironing, shopping, sleeping with Mother to quiet her when she woke wailing in the night, holding them when they cried, answering the knocks at the door to deal with hostile people and merchants who came to collect bills. Twice stones had smashed through the front window in the night, and the children had crept to see Kathleen sobbing while she swept broken glass by candlelight.
She walked to Charles, placed her hand on his shoulder, and looked into his eyes. “You’re the man of the house now. You can do it. Be good to Faith, and get Mother a drink if she asks. I won’t be long.”
Charles swallowed and nodded his head, and his eyes dropped as Kathleen turned and picked the wicker shopping basket from the table and walked to the front door. She paused to look at the mantel clock, then looked once more at Charles and Faith watching her with forlorn eyes, and then she was gone. Outside, she glanced upward at the solid, dark overcast, and then up the street through the fog and drizzling mist, and pulled the hood over her head.
Ten minutes before eleven—funeral’s at eleven—I can make it.
She moved north through the silent, light street traffic with long strides, past the vacant Dunson home and on north to the church. Slowing, she worked her way unnoticed through the people coming and going to tend to the wounded inside and moved to the far side of the churchyard. Cautiously she walked to the corner of the building and peered across the street, where the black wrought-iron picket fence enclosed the headstones and markers and monuments and the crypts of the church cemetery. Midway on the east side, through the dripping oak and maple trees and the fog, she made out the black shapes of many people gathered at the Dunson plot.
She could not hear the words. She stood where she was, alone in the cold rain, watching as Silas spoke briefly, then Joseph Warren. Afterward Silas led the group in a hymn that Kathleen could not hear clearly, and finally Silas dedicated the grave. She watched the men bend to lower the casket on the straps, and they committed the body of John Phelps Dunson back to mother earth. She felt the scalding tears running, dripping onto her cape, and she paid no heed. She watched the tall figure of Matthew cast the first shovel of earth into the grave, and she saw Margaret stiffen and Brigitte grasp Adam and Priscilla close. Tom Sievers cast the second shovel of earth and stepped back and jammed the shovel upright into the large mound. Kathleen choked and sobbed with the deep pain of needing to be there, to hold Margaret, to comfort the children, to throw her arms around Matthew.
Too soon it was over. People slowly backed away from the grave site and walked the winding paths through the wet grass and the marble and granite stones to the street, and silently melted into the fog and were gone. Joseph Warren alone waited at the cemetery gate, head bowed, a lone, solitary figure. Kathleen stood where she was until only the Dunson family remained, and then she watched them turn and walk to the gate and onto the street. Joseph Warren stopped them and handed something to Matthew, and they talked for a moment before the family moved on towards home. Kathleen waited until they were all out of sight before she wiped her face with her handkerchief and crossed the street, passed through the gate, and walked to the Dunson plot where men were preparing to fill the grave with the sticky, wet gray-brown earth. On her approach they backed away while she walked to the head of the open grave and peered down.
Good-bye, John. I love you. I am so sorry. Forgive us. Forgive me. God bless you and keep you.
She waited until her tears stopped, and she wiped her face again and turned and walked rapidly from the cemetery, shopping basket clutched at her side.
At the Dunson home, Tom held the gate while Matthew led into the house, Margaret on his arm.
Tom stopped at the door. “I’ll take my leave now, ma’am.”
“Stay. Please stay,” Margaret pleaded.
They wiped the rain from their shoes onto the braided rug inside the door and shook their wet raincoats out the door and hung them on coat trees to dry, and went to their bedrooms to change, Tom with Matthew.
At noon Matthew sat down at the dining table, a sealed envelope in his hand, his name written on it with a bold flourish.
“Is that from Joseph Warren?” Margaret asked.
Matthew nodded as he broke the seal, and Margaret and Tom sat down beside him while he silently read.
April 20th, 1775
My dear Mr. Matthew Dunson:
This will be delivered by Joseph Warren, our mutual friend.
I extend my deepest sympathies to your mother, Margaret, and yourself and family on the occasion of the loss of your father, John. The account I have received of his passing is an inspiration to all who love this land and have risen to secure our freedom. His name will forever be written with those of patriots and men of God.
However, I write for another purpose. I have received counsel from General George Washington of an immediate and critically urgent need for munitions, if he is to maintain the Continental army. He believes acquiring such munitions in quantities sufficient to his need depends almost entirely on immediately obtaining ships and crews capable of negotiating international waters to secure gunpowder and ordnance from British vessels and offshore allies. To meet his most urgent request we must have experienced maritime navigators who are also qualified to be naval officers. In this regard, discussions with knowledgeable men have led me to you.
It is with full knowledge of the extreme hardship this will place on your family that I must request of you that you set aside personal considerations and volunteer your services as a seasoned navigator in this effort. It is unknown how long your services will be needed, and there will be danger. Should you choose to comply with this request of General Washington, you can expect little more than his undying gratitude, and the eternal thanks of good men everywhere, and the blessings of a just God.
Regrettably, at this time of deep mourning for your family, I will need your response by Sunday, April 23, 1775, which must be in writing, delivered to Joseph Warren.
With greatest respect,
Your obdt. servant,
Captain Soren Weyland
Matthew laid the letter before Margaret and settled against the back of his chair while she slowly read it aloud. When she was finished, she stared at it for long seconds, and then she set it on the table and looked at Tom. Tom looked into her eyes and then looked away as she spoke, quietly and without passion. “John is gone, and now they want Matthew.”
No one spoke. Matthew returned the letter to its envelope and set it on the mantel and returned to his chair. The three of them sat in silence until a knock at the front door broke the somber quiet.
Matthew opened the door, and Dorothy Weems stood before him, shawl covering her head against the rain, slight vapors rising from her breath. She held a smoking, covered cooking pan, hot pads on both handles.
“Come in, please,” Matthew said, and stepped aside. Dorothy followed Margaret into the kitchen and set the pan on the stove. She tried to speak to Margaret and could not and broke into tears, and the two women stood in an embrace for a tim
e before Dorothy settled.
“It’s a ham, Margaret. God bless you. If you need anything, if I can do anything, promise you’ll send word.”
“I will. Can’t you stay for a time?”
“I’ve got dinner ready at home. I don’t know what to say—how sorry I am. God bless you. God bless you all.”
She turned and put her arms around Matthew for a moment, and then Tom. “You two saved my Billy. There is no way to thank you.”
Three minutes after the door closed, Sarah Willums knocked and stood in the rain with a kettle of steamed vegetables, and tears. Five minutes later Mellie Potter left six smoking loaves of bread, and hugs, and as the afternoon wore on the food covered the dining table and spilled into the kitchen. Margaret set out stacks of plates and silverware and invited the steady stream of friends and loved ones to share with them.
In deep dusk the visiting slowed, and by dark it had ended. Once more Tom tried to leave, and once again Margaret pleaded with him to stay. They would make him a bed on the floor in Matthew’s room. By nine o’clock the food had been stored and the dishes done. At nine-thirty they all knelt at the dining room table, and Matthew led them in prayer. At ten o’clock, with the children in bed, Margaret took the letter from the mantel and sat at the table, and the men, with Brigitte, sat with her and she read it aloud once more.
She turned to Matthew. “It’s you they asked for. Do you have an answer?”
Matthew shook his head. “You and the family are the ones that will suffer if I go. What do you say?”
Brigitte leaned forward. “How would we manage—pay bills, eat? We have some money, but not enough for very long.”
Margaret looked at Tom, and he hesitated for a moment before he spoke. “What would John do?”
At ten-thirty Margaret sighed and the conversation died, and she put the letter back in its envelope.
“I don’t know how we would pay our bills and feed ourselves without Matthew,” she said. “And I don’t know how I would raise the children. They need a father, and theirs is gone. They can look to Matthew, but if he leaves . . .” She shook her head and didn’t finish her thought, and they all saw the agony in her eyes. “I don’t have an answer. We can talk about it in the morning before church.”