Читать книгу Fire and the Hammer - Shirley Barker - Страница 8

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A landscape ages the way a face ages, thought Israel Doan, as he peered out into the tangle of shadows and frosty moonlight across his fields and hickory groves, with here and there a late lamp burning in a Plumstead window, and beyond that, all the dim valley winding down. Both he and the landscape were a-many years older than they were the first time he had looked out across these acres, and known them, exultingly, for his; those good times, when anywhere north of Wrightstown a man could buy a hundred acres of rich soil and timber in exchange for an old gray mare. He and his brother, young rakes read out of Middletown Meeting, not bad, but brave and gay then, had come riding up here on the trail that was forest all the way from the long, narrow, timbered farms of Newtown, each with his new and untaken bride on the horse behind him. And now that brother was dead, away south in the Carolinas, where he’d gone after he lost his wife in a hard winter years back, the year they’d picked up frozen birds and squirrels off the top of the snow crust, and three deer had lived in the barn with the stock all through January. Long ago it had been, but he still missed the dead whom he had known and loved. Even if their children were said to flourish in some outlandish place below Virginia, it wasn’t the same. He felt lonely for someone who had shared his young days with him. And his own wife, Esther, was old, and gray, and mumbling—something to be cherished for what she had been, but little comfort to a man these days.

He remembered the golden time of his young manhood in Bucks County, back to 1720 and running down to the year that witless Englishman, Braddock, got beat so bad on the frontier, and all the Indian wars came on, and the Friends started losing their power in the Assembly. Strangers coming in caused it. Not the fault of the Germans, so much, an honest folk, if they did let their women work in the fields and farm by the signs of the stars and moon—after all, his own father could cast up astrology too. It was the fault of the Scotch-Irish—a dark, carnal people. Look at how them militia men up round Deep Run Presbyterian Church kept after his boys! Bob Gibson, the Harts, McCalla, Kennedy—all knaves who’d taken up their guns for King Congress. Oh, the Devil was at the roots of this war! The country was getting above itself. Give him the days when a homespun coat was good enough for a man, even if they did have to carry their guns to Meeting then, and shut the henroost against the wolves come dark. The days when nobody went to a market, when they grew and made all they needed on their own land, under their own roof. He smiled a little at the dark acres under the moon, the frost gathering on the small, square windowpanes, then turned away and went to sit in his twig-bottomed chair by the huge black hearth where the fire that Rachel, his daughter-in-law, had built up so hot at supper time, had burned down into live brands crusted over with ash. He kicked one of Rachel’s iron pots off its squat legs, swung the crane out of the way, and stretched his feet close to the warmth. He wouldn’t go to bed—not till his grandsons came in. Abe had said Joseph’s boys aimed to come home with him to sleep tonight, instead of stopping at their father’s. He wouldn’t want to miss talking with them, pleasing himself with the sight of them. He supposed they’d been down to Buckingham or Coryell’s Ferry; dancing with the girls, maybe. My, but he could leap to the tune of “Packington’s Pound” when he was a young man! Not now! The young, he knew, would go forth into vanity, and the old go into the earth. He’d had his share of vanity, he supposed, but not all he wanted—never all of that! Being brought up a Friend, he knew he’d come of a wondrous holy people, but sin creaked in his bones to their very marrow. Neither sin nor holiness ever set quite easy on a man. What he’d like would be to go riding out with the boys again, if it wasn’t for his crooked shanks and lame back. They ought to be getting in now, whatever devilment they’d been up to. He leaned against the whittled slats of the chairback and looked up at the half dozen rosy-brown hams hanging on the smoky rafters over his head.

He had begat sons and daughters liberally, according to the Bible example, helped each to his own holdings round the countryside, and of them all, only his own namesake still lived at home, fifty himself, and sickly, but possessed of a wife and strong sons—especially Abraham! He slapped his knee when he thought of Abraham, picked up a firebrand with the tongs, and lighted his pipe. Abe had leaped over a Conestoga wagon once at a vendue in Buckingham, and once in Dublin on a training day. Abe had been known to make tax collectors dance barefooted on heaps of broken glass, or maybe a red-hot stove cover. Friends in the Meeting said he and the boys’ fathers ought to reprove them for walking disorderly. Their fathers had done it—not him! For himself, he’d stand against wars, tithes and oaths any day. They were all as one—all bad.

He began to hum,

“Who rides so well, so well,

As Moses, Moses Doan?”

Moses! There was a man for thee! ’Twould be better to be gripped in a vise, men said, than to wrestle with him. With his Lancaster rifle he could hit a wooden nailhead at a hundred yards. And Moses had had a Word!

Israel thought then of himself as he was, a little, wizened man, his gray hair hanging in elf locks, his eyes black and snapping, his face like a withered russet apple. A prosperous farmer, looking for help to no one but God, who asked only of his sons and grandsons that they see to it that nothing stand taller around them except their trees. A Quaker—truly! But to be a Quaker didn’t mean that thee couldn’t be a man!

Now he heard the sounds he had been waiting for: the thudding of hoofs over frozen ground, the voices of young men, deep, rough, laughing, full of vigor. He heard the groan of the iron hinge on the heavy barn door as they flung it open to put their horses away. He did not rise to look out; he stretched back in contentment and pulled at his pipe. Well enough to admit to himself that he had been growing more and more worried the last half hour, but they were at home now, safe—till another time.

Perhaps it had been folly in him to worry anyway. Some folk wondered why they hadn’t been shot down or put in jail long ago. Most folk knew. Knew that the Doans were doing what more than half Bucks County wanted to do, to strike at anybody who tried to change the old, free ways they’d inherited from their great-grandfathers, whether it was a king or a congress. Plenty of Friends at the Meeting who’d chide about his boys took a secret pride in them; didn’t like the war a bit better than Mose and his brothers did. And if a tax gatherer met with misfortune now and then, it was not really their affair. Many of the more violent Whigs who might have been hot after them with bullets were over in the Jerseys now with Washington’s army. Yes, his boys didn’t have hides made lead-proof by magic, like the Indians said they did, but they could shoot and ride and play a japes if need be, and the underlying temper of their neighbors caused most men to look the other way, even to smile a little—so far. If only they hadn’t come out so bold as to rob Sam Bye at the Anchor a few weeks back!

And then suddenly the kitchen was full of them, tall, dark-eyed, ruddy, in gray woolen clothes and blue home-knit stockings. Moses wore a red silk handkerchief tied around his neck, and Aaron had a partridge feather stuck in his close, round cap. Mahlon’s weather-white deerskins looked as if they had grown on him. Boots clattered on the pine floorboards as they rushed to hang up their guns on a row of hooks on the wall beside the fireplace, flung their powderhorns on the oak dresser among Esther’s cherished bits of pewterware. Abe reached into the corner cupboard for a bottle of grog.

Old Israel held up one hand and steadied his pipe with the other.

“Hush thy noise! Thee’ll wake up the whole house and have Rachel down here scolding!”

“Perhaps she’ll send Mary down,” murmured young Joe Doan slyly. “Mary may be abed, but she ain’t asleep. I told her I’d come by.”

“Thee leave Mary alone now!” chided his grandfather. “The child ain’t above twelve.”

“She’s as grown as she’ll ever be—and as pretty. As ripe, too.”

Israel ignored him. The boys had sprawled on chairs and benches while Abe handed the drink round. Now they were all served, and Mose stood up, lifting his mug. The others followed him. They stood a moment. Then Mahlon spoke, quite out of turn, surprising everybody.

“Will thee join our toast, Grandsir?” he asked.

Israel had always been against the drinking of healths. He had watched his grandsons do it often, but he had never been asked to join them before. Now it was not Mose, the leader, who asked him, not the powerful and savage Abraham he had reared in his own house. It was the shy, slight, often-unnoticed Mahlon. But Mahlon was, someways, the wildest one. Knew the woods better than the creatures that lived there knew them. Wasn’t a better woodsman than Mahlon east of the Alleghenies. Israel reached for the bottle, saw no mug handy without prowling the cupboard for one. Let the bottle do! He stood up. He saw Moses’ full upper lip quirk slightly upward in approval.

“To George—his England!” boomed Moses. They drank briefly.

“And to the Doans—Free America!” They drained their mugs and the old man held the bottle tilted as long as he dared. Then they sat down and began pulling off their boots.

“Where’d thee go tonight?” asked Israel. “Was the Plumstead militia out pestering thee?”

“No,” answered Joe, always the readiest talker, which came of teaching school and reading books. “We’ve been down along the river and back past Bogart’s tavern where General Greene’s lodged. Give him a few cheers for the King as we went by. Whole county’s creeping full of Washington’s rebels. They got a cornstalk general in every house from Coryell’s down, and Newtown’s crowded with ox teams bringing in victuals and powder for ’em. I hear there’s talk they mean to march on Trenton. Anyways, they seem to be studying war.” He grinned; peered up the crooked stairway in the shadows at the back of the kitchen; caught a flash of white there.

“We set three of their boys to studying something else tonight,” boasted Moses, leaning back, putting his stockinged feet on the table. “Shove that candlestick away, Levi, or I’ll set my damn toes afire.”

“Then thee’d know how some tax collectors feel,” said Levi, moving the candlestick.

“Go on. Tell whole tale,” urged their grandfather, bending forward, so eager to hear of the adventure that he did not see Joe slip away to blend with the shadow on the stairs. If the other boys saw, they gave no sign.

“Down by Dark Hollow,” went on Mose, “we seen three rangers up ahead, so we scattered an’ hid. Aaron gets off his horse an’ goes limping up to ’em like somebody’s broke his back, all time holding onto his head and muttering, ‘Oh the Doans, the Doans!’; saying we’d beat him. Rangers swore they’d make us pay, an’ he said he’d show them where we were. He led them down to the river an’ we all jumped them. Cove there’d frozen over, but we broke the ice fast enough, and clucked them till they cheered for King George. Made ’em cheer till folk could have heard ’em in Jersey, an’ then sent ’em back to camp with Delaware freezing on ’em. They won’t go looking for Doans again.”

“Aaron played it so high I near killed myself laughing,” chuckled Levi. “He ought to be on the stage down to Philadelphia. I ain’t seen men so discomforted and surprised-like since that time thee beat up Jim Fitz, Mose.”

“Jim got over that though,” answered Moses, pleased. “Asked at the time if I had any brothers home like me, an’ when I said, yes, four, he said his business wouldn’t be taking him back to Bucks very soon. But we’re friends now.”

“He steals horses for the British over in Montgomery, don’t he?” asked the grandfather, poking up the fire a little, for the chill of after-midnight seeped through the small, stone farmhouse.

“Yes. He fought for the Continentals for a while, but he didn’t like marching in line, and putting up-thy-gun or down-thy-gun when the sergeant says so. While sergeant’s thinking what to do, the game gets away. He deserted then and become a cowboy—like us: the name people’s given to horse thieves.

“Saw him up in Dublin last week. Pleased with himself. He’d just flogged a damn Whig for going through his house looking for him and breaking his mother’s spinning wheel. He wants us to go along with him in a plan he’s got. We’re to drive all the horses we can come by over to his place in Montgomery, an’ he’ll drive ’em south to be sold, where their owners can’t find ’em and claim ’em back. We may drive some south ourselves. Grandsir, didn’t thee tell me once we had kin in the Carolinas? I wonder could they put us in touch with the horse markets there?”

“We’ve got kin there, yes,” answered the old man slowly. “My brother Joseph. Your father’s named for him. He died there, but his son married—seems like I heard it was three times. John Woolman saw him when he traveled through there, and told me about it once when I met him at the gunsmith’s in Bristol. There’d be boys thy age—plenty of them. But I don’t know that they’d welcome cowboys.”

“I’ve heard it’s wilder country than here,” said Mahlon. “Fewer houses and cleared lands. Better hunting. Man’s got a better chance to be free. Did thy brother go there for that?”

“Well, no, I don’t rightly think so,” mused the old man, memories coming back, flowing over his dry old lips, tasting sweet to them. “Brother never seemed to have heart for much after his wife died. Sold his farm and scattered his children about with kin. Got the idea first he’d like to go back to the Coast of Cod where Father come from, an’ he did, but he didn’t like it there. Some place by the sea water called Eastham, I think he said. Said it looked just like Plumstead—a ridge, and land sloped away both sides the same. ’Twas from him, not from Father, that I heard all about who we Doans be an’ where we come from. He heard it from the kin who stayed up there.”

“Who be we?”

“We be Chief Foresters of Delamere Forest in the County of Cheshire. Somewhere near Wales west of England, an old Doan cousin told Joe. Seems we had that title an’ its rights since the days of King John, an’ I don’t know when he reigned, but I’m sure it was a sight before any of the Georges. Brother was right proud when he heard it, and took pains to remember it all. Little and little it comes back to me what he said.”

He paused. The boys waited silently, everyone too interested to notice the absence of Joe or the light scuffling back in the shadow.

“My great-grandfather got restless in Cheshire. He loved his forest an’ it was being cut down. King was using it to build ships. He wanted the wild, free ways of the woods, so he left there and come over the sea. It was a rock and bramble county, he said, after the trees went, an’ he had to become a carpenter. Most of us been carpenters ever since. He lost the old rights, too—chief forester rights to every swarm of wild bees and the right shoulder of every deer anybody shot. Could behead a thief, too, if he caught him in the act. Now that I tell it over, it comes to me that maybe that’s where thee got the ways thee’s got. Maybe it’s not the Light shining in Mose that’s led thee off the track; maybe it’s in the blood an’ what the blood’s been used to. Great-grandsir always said, I recollect Brother told me, that Cheshire men more readily resort to arms and are harder to govern than other people. Maybe thee be not at fault; only bred true.”

Mahlon’s face wore the rapt look of one who has seen a vision. “Chief Forester,” he murmured. “I’d have liked that.”

“Well,” asked Levi impatiently, “we still don’t know why Uncle went to Carolina.”

“I never knew myself. He never told me. He couldn’t live here without his wife—or thought he couldn’t. He didn’t care for Eastham or Sandwich or any of the towns he saw there. ’Bout the time he come back, there was a party heading south. Squire Boone from over to Durham Ironworks was one, I mind. He took up land in the Yadkin country, and I understand his boy Dan’s doing right well on the frontier. Anyway, Joe went south with them, an’ took one of his boys with him. They joined Cane Creek Meeting where Woolman went and saw them. They never came back, and I only heard twice. Heard ’twas the deepest woods they’d ever seen, an’ the best game; that it wouldn’t be grown up to farms and towns like we be in a thousand years.”

“Some day,” said Mahlon very low, mostly to himself, “I’m going down there.”

“If we don’t go along with Jim Fitz,” spoke Aaron, bringing the talk back to matters of closer concern, “maybe we should join one of the Tory regiments that’s forming round. I hear in Philadelphia the British are offering a bounty for such. They say any man who fights for them gets fifty free acres after the war, where he can enjoy his bottle and his lass.”

Moses spat into the fire. “I ain’t joining nothing,” he muttered. “I’ll fight if I must, but for myself and not in wars. I’m a free man of Pennsylvania.”

“Thee can’t be, any more,” said Joe, emerging from the shadow, his usually sleek hair tousled. “There aren’t any such. Pennsylvania can’t settle its own affairs now. We can’t so much as slaughter a hog but what we got to run and ask New Hampshire, or send to Georgia, or get leave from Jersey, or find out how the world sets with the Virginia men. That’s because now we’re a United States. When they signed the Declaration of Independence, when they set themselves up to be a nation and mix with the nations overseas—that was the end of American freedom, right there.”

“We been pushed too far,” muttered Moses. “If they want their war, let ’em have it, so long as they leave us alone. But they won’t. Either we got to fight for ’em, or pay ’em two pounds ten. By God, I’ll get my two pounds back, with usury—an’ they’re lucky if it ain’t blood. America was meant to be free! I had a Word that said so.”

“Some tried it honest in Newtown by the vote,” said Abraham gruffly, the first time he had spoken since the toast was drunk. “In free election they voted to hold by the old ways we’ve always lived under. An’ Philadelphia set the militia on ’em. An’ remember Joe Smith from Pine Town that Father taught to make plows? They made him run the gantlet. Said they’d keep the damn Quaker warm enough!”

“That,” mocked Joe, “is called Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, my brothers.”

“I don’t see there’s any use going on as we are,” said Mahlon resentfully, “trying to steal our own back, and getting a bad name for it, and beating up every taxing bastard we can catch. There’s too many of ’em. They’re set too strong. We’d be better off out west, beyond the Scotchmen, beyond the tree-line even—down the Great Valley or off to Kentucky country. If Uncle said there was great woods in the south—A man could be free there! We better go away from here.”

Moses laughed with a sudden gaiety not common in him.

“We know what’s making thee so sour-faced, little brother.” He turned to old Israel. “Grandsir, Mahlon has got woman-trouble. To my sure knowledge he’s keeping a half-wife down to Buckingham, and now there’s the most persuading red-headed piece I ever saw, looking at him with want in her eye.”

“I noticed it, too! Down at the Anchor one night a few weeks back!” cried Abraham. “With Sam Bye, she was. But Sam’s no good to her once she’s seen a Doan. Come to think of it now, she handed him all Sam’s money an’ looked pleased to do it. Give her what she wants, Mahlon. All she wants is a plain man’s yea.”

“Aye,” taunted Joe. “Grandsir, I’ll wager Mahlon can out-wench us all.”

Mahlon stood up. “If I do, it won’t be on the back stairs with my own cousin,” he announced. “I’m going up to bed.”

Swiftly, their boots hung round their necks by knotted laces, the brothers climbed up a ladder nailed to the rear wall, leading to an unfinished loft where they could sleep without disturbing the rest of the family.

Alone, as he had been an hour earlier, Israel Doan went to the window to take one last look at the fields he had cleared, the fields he loved. In spite of the houseful of breathing life around him, life created out of his life and passion, he was now, toward the end, a man alone. In the way that every man is alone! Alone with the things he knows that no one else ever can; what life was to him and the way he found it; how he felt the first time he kissed a girl, or heard the wail of a new son, or watched his father die. In a way, these things were the same for every man, but in a way, they were never twice the same, and to no two men on earth did they ever come alike. When he died, these things that only he knew would die with him. There was no way to pass them on. Come next summer he would be seventy-eight years old, and it could not be so long now until, though there might be great goings-on in Bucks County, he would have no part in them. And then he heard the deep flow of the boys’ voices as they talked among themselves under the blankets in the loft. His sadness left him and he turned to quench the fire, on his face a peaceful smile of fulfillment and satisfaction. He had done good and evil in his life, but above all, he had passed life on, and that was the chief thing a man was supposed to do. “Say I am dead,” he murmured, thrusting the small iron rake among the ruddy embers, “but say I have left six grandsons behind me, each one stronger than I; that they be that much better off than we were.”