April Morning (4 page)

But such a discussion did provide the philosophical content without which no Committee meeting was complete, and it gave my father, who had always dreamed of himself as a newspaper editor whose flaming words would arouse thousands to action, an opportunity to plunge into the fray. I never could understand whether he enjoyed the points Samuel Adams stood for or simply looked upon him as a kindred cantankerous soul.

My father rose to speak to this point, and while he repeated to my mother, word for word, everything he had said and good summations of what his opponents had said, I see no purpose in setting it down here. Father hated guns and only accepted them as a burden we had to bear; closer to his heart was the war of ideas at a time of decision. I think that he deeply believed that if you could win an argument, you could win a war.

The final argument, as with almost all Committee meetings, revolved around the question of whether or not minutes should be kept.

As usual, after the timid ones—or sensible ones, depending on your point of view—had said their say to the effect that it was one thing to put your head in a noose and something else indeed to be your own hangman, my father rose to the occasion:

“I am a man of peace [so he told Mother, but it always appeared to me that he was the most belligerent man of peace I had ever encountered] yet on this point I rise in anger, indignation—and disappointment. Yes, disappointment! Are we slaves who plot and skulk in secret? Are we conspirators? Are we a pack of bandits, planning some dastardly thievery? Or are we free Englishmen, freeborn on our own freehold? Destroy the minutes? First I would cut out my heart and destroy it! Shall I be ashamed of this Committee? But if the Committee is not the noblest thing we have wrought, then how shall we face our brother Committees, scattered across these thirteen colonies? Destroy them? Give me the minutes, and I will bear them home with me, so that my children and their children may see that we did not fail to rise when history demanded it!”

As usual, Father's oratory carried the day, and the minutes remained where they always had been, on the top shelf of the Reverend's lectern, underneath his Bible. However, Mother asked Father, withal gently, whether he didn't think he had perhaps been a little strong in some of his denunciations and comparisons.

“Strong feelings demand strong words,” he replied.

“Nevertheless, Moses, I would not want people to go around saying that you make mountains out of molehills.”

“A mountain still in the distance can appear as a molehill.”

“I suppose so. Still, I must confess that I like your reasonable moods better.”

“And what was unreasonable about my opposition to burning the minutes? Are we animals, slaves, Frenchmen?”

“I didn't mean that at all, Moses. I simply meant that we will all be better and calmer and—don't be angry, please—happier when this blows over and our proper rights are granted to us.”

Father could have found arguments; but he was tired enough to agree to this.

While Father was at the Committee meeting, I decided that I would walk over to the Simmons place. I needed sympathy, and Ruth was the most sympathetic person I knew. As a matter of fact, she was sympathetic to a fault, and sometimes it could be downright tiring; but in the mood I was in tonight, I couldn't have too much sympathy.

Cousin Simmons was a blacksmith. His father had been a blacksmith and his five sons were raised in the trade. Four of them pooled their capital and purchased half of the shares in a slaver that was running Africans from the West Coast into the Carolinas and the West Indies. There was divided opinion on the question of buying shares in slavers. These shares were handled by commission brokers in Boston and sold from a small shed on the river edge. Some held that since the slavers did not sail out of Boston Port, it was just business and no worse than any other business; and they bolstered their arguments by pointing to the abuses practiced on the sugar plantations and reminding their listeners that there was no Boston family of even modest means that did not have some stake in the rum trade. My father, on the other hand, held that slavers were the lowest form of life existent on earth, the devil in flesh, the Haman of our time. The Reverend agreed with him, and between them they carried the expulsion of Noah Cotton from the Committee after he invested five sovereigns in slaver shares.

That was no mean feat; and while most people accepted my father's position on moral grounds, the profits in slaver shares were enormous. Only one ship in three brought its cargo through, but when it did, the returns for the investor were magnificent.

The ship the Simmons brothers had invested in came through, making them rich as some folk consider riches, and they took the money and opened an ironworks in Connecticut. But Joseph Simmons broke with them and remained a smith in our village. He was a mild man, and you would never think to know him that he could be so adamant on a moral question—I, for one, have not found very much to admire in moral people, but he was an exception to the rule. His brothers were dead in his eyes; he would never speak about them or refer to them in any way. Lately, the British had ruined the iron business with their prohibitions, import laws and colonial taxes, and it had come to our knowledge that the four Simmons brothers had joined their local Committee and were real firebrands; but that made no difference to Joseph. As for Father, he never spoke openly about the various elements that went into Committees for various reasons, some of them less than noble, but I knew his opinion. He didn't hold them highly.

When I got to the Simmons place, the kitchen afterwork was done, and Mrs. Simmons and her widow sister Susan were sitting at the kitchen table reading Job aloud from the Bible. They were both of them sad ladies who dispensed smiles as if they were shillings, and they were strongly given to their Bible and to things like Job and Jeremiah and Nahum. It wasn't that they were unpleasant people; indeed, they were the sweetest things ever; they just enjoyed melancholy and seemed to take heart and spirit from it.

As I came in, Mrs. Simmons looked up and said, “Why, Adam Cooper, what a pleasant surprise!” Just as if she had not already seen me twice this day. The widow sister went to the cupboard and cut me a piece of sweet carrot pie; she was stronger for actions than for words.

“I just finished supper.”

“Adam—that's my sweet carrot pie.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I nodded, and began to eat. It wasn't any effort at all.

“Adam has the finest reading voice,” the widow sister said.

Mrs. Simmons nodded. “I remarked on that many times.”

“We were reading from Job,” the widow sister said.

“No matter how many times I read Job, I never fail to have a new insight. Do you find that to be the case with yourself, Adam?”

I had not paid much attention to Job lately, and mumbled something to that effect. As long as I kept my mouth full, they would accept anything I said.

“A shame.”

“Such a shame,” the widow sister said gently. “When we close our eyes, we are like the blind.”

“I'm sure Adam would not willfully close his eyes.”

“Not willfully, sister, but it happens.”

“It would be nice,” said Mrs. Simmons, “if after Adam finishes his pie, he would read to us aloud. It need not be Job. It could be Judges. I do think that there's more in Judges to interest a young man than in Job.”

I appreciated her calling me a young man instead of a boy, and I also appreciated her substitution of Judges for Job. In its own way, Judges may be heavy going, but it does have a good battle scene or two, and it's just a sleigh ride compared to Job. But the last thing I wanted to do tonight was to spend it with a Bible reading, and I could have kissed Ruth when she came down just in time to get me out of the whole thing. Like the other Simmons women, Ruth is perhaps a trifle overgentle, but she has a mind of her own and she knows when to use it. She made no bones about letting them know that I had come over to see her and that we were going to take a walk in the moonlight.

It may seem strange that a churchgoing and pious woman like Mrs. Simmons should offer no objections to Ruth and myself walking after darkness, but Mrs. Simmons held that less was likely to happen at nighttime, when the grass was wet with dew and cold and clammy, than in the dry day under a hot sun. She was right.

All that happened between Ruth and me that evening was that we talked and held hands and kissed once. Ruth was three months younger than I, and I had known her since I' had known anybody. When we were thirteen years old, she asked me whether I had decided whom I intended to marry, and I replied that I hadn't given the matter much thought since it did not appear to be particularly pressing. She was a little shocked at that, and I have since recognized that girls begin to brood upon these questions considerably before boys do. She, it appeared, had already thought the matter through and picked me—because she had always loved me and saw no reason why she should not continue to do so. After that, I had a few nervous days, but when I talked it over with Granny, she pointed out that empires could rise and fall before I came of marrying age and had to give the problem serious attention. I was vague on the process of empires, and not exactly sure what they consisted of, but nevertheless I was greatly relieved. It fell into the category of death from overeating, a fate I had been warned about on numerous occasions but which was far enough in the future not to trouble my sleep.

In the two years since then, Ruth changed considerably. She brought up the subject of matrimony less and less frequently, and finally dropped it entirely. At thirteen, she had been a skinny kid who, if not downright ugly, gave the general impression of two pale blue eyes behind a mass of freckles. She also ran to red elbows, skinned knees, and overlarge, bony hands. Since then, she had filled out very nicely; the elbows shaded down, and the bones were not noticeable. Her red hair, instead of flying wild like a mop upended, was gathered on her neck and highly admired by all sorts of people, and there were times when I found myself looking at her and thinking that she was beautiful. I will admit that my own attitude toward girls had changed, and there began to be occasions when I would say to Ruth:

“What I don't understand is why not, if you're going to marry me anyway?”

“You wouldn't understand because you're a boy and I'm a girl.”

“My goodness, would I be pressing for that kind of thing if I was a girl? I should hope not!”

“And anyway, Adam Cooper, it's a long time since I said anything about marrying you.”

“You haven't changed your mind?”

“Well, I don't know, the things you're always after! I just don't know.”

But on this night, she seemed genuinely glad to see me. We got out of the house and walked down the lane toward the pump house. Then we turned toward the little grove of trees where Lyman's pigpen was, and we passed Mrs. Spencer, who said:

“Out walking, are you, Adam?” The way she said it made it totally sinful.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Well!” She could do a lot with one word. I had an opinion of her, but Ruth said she suffered from after-meal dyspepsia and had to walk around in the darkness to get the gas up, and it was a known fact that people with her condition were shorter and meaner than they had to be.

“Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry,” I replied to Mrs. Spencer.

We walked on and Ruth remarked that she saw no reason for my apologizing to Mrs. Spencer.

“I suppose I'm just in the habit,” I said. “I apologize to most anyone these days, and I'm pretty sick and tired of the whole thing, I can tell you that.”

“There's no use to get morbid about it, Adam. I don't really care what you say to Goody Spencer or what she thinks. Have you been having a fight with your father again?”

“Still.”

“What?”

“Not again—still. It's just one long affair. You'd think he'd want an hour here or there to rest himself from telling me what a useless, misbegotten thing I am. But not him. No, sir. It's like bread and butter to him. He thrives on it.”

“Oh, Adam, it's not as bad as all that,” Ruth said.

“Just tonight, I asked him as pleasant and respectful as possible whether I could go to the Committee meeting with him. Oh, no. When I was a man, I could go, and he made it plain to me what he thought about me being a man. Your pa was there, and believe me, I never was so humiliated in all my life.”

“But you know about how Pa doesn't pay any attention to what Cousin Moses says.”

“Gideon Perkins is three days younger than I am, and he's been attending Committee meetings since Christmastime.”

“But wouldn't you rather be out walking with me, Adam?” Ruth asked, taking my arm. “If you were at the silly Committee meeting, you wouldn't be out here walking, would you?”

“I suppose not.”

“Well, there.”

“That doesn't make any sense, Ruth,” I told her. “That doesn't solve one blessed thing.”

“Adam Cooper, what do you expect to solve? You're only fifteen years old. Why don't you have enough patience to wait a few years and let things take their proper and natural course?”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won't.”

“What does that mean?” she asked impatiently. Ruth Simmons had set ideas about what was fit conversation and action for a walking-out at nighttime, and this was not according to form.

“You know about my Uncle Ishmael Jamison?”

“The smuggler who keeps the colored wife in Jamaica?”

“Now that's a fine way to talk, Ruth Simmons! That's just a real fine way to talk! That shows a real profound knowledge of politics, yes it does! Just as if there was a master sails out of Boston without carrying a little contraband here and there! I suppose you'd want all our people to sit back and starve to death the way the British lords say we should—oh, yes, sir, yes, sir, we'll just wither away to please your excellencies, and go ahead and take all our churches and put in your priests and we'll all get down on our knees before those Episcopalian lords and padre them to death—”