by John Smolens
Benjamin touched Leander on the sleeve, and led him toward the back doors of the stable. “Between the Madame, Master Sumner, and my father, I don’t know who’s going to go first. I just want to see that he’s comfortable.”
“We’ll see what we can do for him.” Leander stopped and placed his bag on a bale of hay. He took out a bottle and gave it to Benjamin. “This should ease the congestion in his lungs.”
Benjamin nodded as he put the bottle in his vest pocket. “He’s been going downhill since the night that that Boston man died.”
“Mr. Clapp.”
“They fixed the scoundrel, though it almost killed my father.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t know?”
“The Boston man washed up on Joppa Flats, dead. Cedella and I were there. There are all sorts of stories—about the constables, about the mobs—but no one seems to know for certain what happened.”
“Because no one really wants to know,” Benjamin said. “I hear there was talk of taking action against some of the constables—perhaps even the high sheriff Thomas Poole—but there was no proof.”
“But you know?”
Benjamin leaned a haunch on the bale of hay. “We were there—my father and me. There had been a mob roaming the streets, looking for Clapp and Samuel. They finally found Clapp, who was in the custody of the high sheriff and some of his constables. Word came that Samuel had escaped Newburyport, and this turned the mob for the worse. They demanded that Poole give up Clapp, and they threw a rope over a lantern post down by the wharves. Poole argued for law and order, but it was hopeless—even some of his own men were for a hanging then and there.”
“I believe that,” Leander said. “I saw them earlier, and they were out for blood.”
“There was a great deal of confusion, a brawl, really. And my father—he was never one to keep out of the fray—he took a beating and ended up in a puddle. Caught a terrible chill, he did, and his breathing ain’t been right since. But this Clapp, somehow during the fracas he got free. Runs out on the wharf, chased by this drunken mob—runs right off the end of the wharf and disappears into the river, and were they ever disappointed.”
“And the next morning we found his body on Joppa flats,” Leander said.
“So, it should be a lesson,” Benjamin said, and then he smiled. “A lesson for men who think they can come north from Boston to take advantage of Newburyporters.” Benjamin got to his feet and walked toward the back of the stable.
Leander picked up his leather bag and followed. The stalls were empty, the fleet of carriages gone. When they went out the stable door, Leander tugged down on the brim of his hat, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. Then he looked across the paddock at one of Thomas Jefferson’s stallions—harnessed and saddled, its white coat glistening in the light.
Benjamin walked over and took hold of the reins, rubbing the horse’s nose with his free hand. “I trust this will be compensation enough?” he said. “Master had an agreement to sell both, but at the last minute he changed his mind. And now it’s yours.” Benjamin reached out and took the medicine bag.
Leander approached the horse, placed his foot in the stirrup, and pulled himself up and over into the creaking saddle. The horse turned its head until its eye could see him, and it snorted and shook its mane.
“There,” Benjamin said as he began to tie the medicine bag to the saddle, “you two should get along splendidly.”
“I believe so.”
Stepping back, Benjamin said, “Well, be on your way now and do your rounds, and stop by again soon.”
“Until then, Benjamin.”
The stallion walked down the length of the paddock and through the open gate. Was a time when the gate would always have been closed, locked, and guarded by a sentry. Now there was little left to take from the Sumner house.
On High Street, Leander eased the reins and the horse quickened his gait, slowing when they turned down State Street. As they passed Wolfe Tavern, Roger Davenport was seated upon his stool in the doorway, arms folded. His eyes studied the fine white horse with genuine interest, but seemed to take little notice of the rider. A few doors down, an elderly couple were mending fishnet in the side yard. When they looked up from their work, the wife said, “There be the new doctor,” and raising her arm in greeting she called, “Afternoon, sir!” By way of greeting, Leander touched the brim of his hat and continued down to Market Square, where a crowd had gathered to trade, while overhead seagulls wheeled in fall air tinged with the briny scent of the marshes.
Afterword
MY WORK ON THIS BOOK REALLY BEGAN NEARLY FORTY YEARS ago in a dilapidated clapboard house on Tyng Street in Newburyport’s North End. I had graduated from Boston College the year before and had no real notion of what I might do with my life, with one exception: I wanted to write stories. I realize now that a Federalist house built in the 1790s was the perfect place for me to start.
A man I knew had bought the house for less than twenty thousand dollars. He was looking for cheap labor and I was looking for a reason to get out of Boston. He knew that I had worked summers in college painting houses, so he offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse: I could live in the enormous house rent-free and he would pay me four dollars an hour to help restore the place. He made this offer over beers on a Friday night, and to his surprise I arrived the following Monday with my mattress tied to the roof of my car. The drive north from Boston to Newburyport was thirty-eight miles, but the true distance seemed not a matter of miles but of centuries. When I entered the seaport at the mouth of the Merrimack, I was certain I had just traveled through a time warp and landed in the eighteenth century.
Over the next year or so, I came to know every inch of that house on Tyng Street. The restoration of Newburyport’s houses and buildings was just beginning at that time. When I arrived in the spring of 1973, most of the brick storefronts along State Street and in Market Square were empty. It wasn’t until the following winter that much of downtown was wrapped in scaffolding and the extensive restoration of the commercial district began, leading Newburyport into a remarkable period of growth and rejuvenation. On Tyng Street, I began by gutting the entire house, and more than any research conducted in the stacks at libraries and historical societies it was that job which led me to writing this novel nearly four decades later. When you gut a house by hand, your primary tools are the claw-hammer, cat’s paw, crowbar, and sledge, all powered by sweat and muscle. The nails I pulled were often original square-cut nails that dated back to when the house was built. History had been chronicled throughout the house. Newspapers, books, a set of racing forms, and one diary (written by a man who had frequently been institutionalized) were discovered, along with the remains of dead animals, when plaster-and-lath walls and wide pine floorboards were ripped out. But the greatest curiosity was the wood itself which, when removed, revealed a personal historical record. Frequently, I would discover on the back of boards a carpenter’s penciled jottings, measurements taken generations earlier. Most intriguing were the pieces of wood that had been signed and dated by someone who had worked on the house centuries before—and in one case the recorded date, scratched into a wall stud with a nail, pre-dated the house, indicating that some of the lumber had been salvaged from an earlier structure. Never have I felt a stronger connection to the past as when I held such pieces of wood in my hands.
I lived in Newburyport for most of the next decade, until I went to graduate school in the Midwest and ultimately found a job teaching in Michigan. Part of me has never really left Newburyport, and when I am able to return, I’m a shameless gawker: I take long walks and slow drives about town, gazing at the houses, marveling at their sheer substance and architectural integrity. There are few streets that don’t have at least one house that I don’t know well because I lived in it, worked on it, and often both. I moved frequently in those years, accompanied by my faithful white mutt who answered to Toby. I was always broke or nearly so, yet I knew then t
hat my days in Newburyport were rich. It was a good place for a young writer to get blisters on his hands.
When it comes to acknowledgements for this book, my first thought is of Newburyporters—the folks I knew during the years I lived there, certainly; but it goes beyond my time, back to those people who signed their names to a piece of molding because they too saw and felt the uncommon nature of that city at the mouth of the Merrimack. They were building a community, one that has weathered the erosion of history remarkably well. Life was seldom easy, to be sure; but I believe that there, in those houses, we shared something that has become all too rare these days—a sense of belonging to that place; a love for the river, the salt marshes, the Plum Island dunes, and, of course, the Atlantic.
Those who are familiar with the history of Newburyport may recognize that some aspects of this story have been gleaned from the works of writers such as John J. Currier, Sarah Anna Emery, and John Marquand, as well as old issues of Newburyport newspapers, and that certain characters may at times bear some of the foibles, predilections, and eccentricities that are often associated with particular historical personages of some repute (to put it kindly).
Fiction is misrepresentation, though sometimes despite its artificial devices it manages to reveal some hard-won truth. I hope that at the very least this novel might shed a little light on Newburyport’s past. Needless to say, my renderings of these characters, places, and events are the product of my own suspect imagination; any oversights, inaccuracies, or errors are solely my fault. If you can forgive them, I would be most grateful.
There are certain individuals who bear a great deal of responsibility for helping me complete this book, particularly as its final drafts were written, revised, and edited in the aftermath of my wife Patricia’s death last year. This book, and the folks who assisted me with it, helped me get through all that, and to them I am forever indebted.
I’m most appreciative of how Claiborne Hancock and Jessica Case at Pegasus Books treat book-making as an act of faith; and how my agent Noah Lukeman continues to provide two things a writer needs: encouragement and sound advice.
I am indebted to my good friends and colleagues here in Marquette, and to Northern Michigan University for the Peter White Scholar Award and the sabbatical, which made it possible for me to complete this book.
Thanks to Amy Smith Borash, who read through these pages with pen in hand, miraculously righting all that I got crooked, confused, or listing to starboard.
The map of Newburyport in this book was created by Newburyport artist Susan Spellman, with whom I attended grammar school (from the very beginning she excelled at art, and the nuns clearly liked her best, even Sister Robert Marion); and it has been wonderful to reconnect after too many years with one of my favorite old-time hockey rink rats, Susan’s husband, Jay McGovern.
Special thanks to Joyce Abugov, who over the years has sent me newspaper clippings, photographs, and books about Newburyport. Whenever I return to Newburyport, Joyce, her daughter Michaella, and their excellent Labrador Neo, have always offered me shelter in their beautifully restored Federalist home. And this too calls to mind the memory of Ross Benjamin Scott.
Finally, this book is dedicated to my brothers Peter and Michael, and my sister Elizabeth. Without you, my new world would be a most dismal and solitary place.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 2012 by John Smolens
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