Brookland (3 page)

—Hey, now, Johanna is my dearest friend. You see? Mother asked, trying in vain to purse her lips; but she and Father were both laughing. She leaned over & kissed him full on the mouth. Marty Winship, you'll have some talking to do when you reach t'Other Side, that's all I'll say.

—It depends what part of the place I hope to inhabit. The Devil'll have me in his quarter, no questions asked.

—You'll change your tune if he comes for ye tomorrow, she countered.

—Well, if he does, I'll shout for your help straightaway. He pulled her down into his lap, and kissed the side of her throat, where I knew the skin was particularly soft. Roxy, you could talk the Devil out of his best cloven shoes.

—Daddy, I said, you're not going to the Devil, are you?

They both laughed at me.—Not if the domine can help it. But we'll show him, wo'n't we, who'll be more welcome in Satan's house? That is, if Satan even
has
a house; which I sorely doubt.

As an adult, I recognize the foregoing as, first off, the banter of two people in love, and second, of two people with no earthly notion how their words might influence the mind of a suggestible child. At the time, I could be nothing but shocked & terrified. These were, after all, the two most important of the dozen adult persons who made up the known world, and I took what they said for uninflected truth. In one breath, Father had condemned the domine and his church to Hell, and in the next claimed no such place existed; and I further deduced not only that my father's death was nigh, but that both my parents were doomed to punishment for thinking this such a laughing matter. I did not believe I
could express my foreboding without eliciting their scorn, so I betook myself to my room,—which, when later I came to share it with my sisters, would seem strait enough, but at the time was a vast savanna on which my fears might frolick,—and there worried that every tap of a branch against the windowpane was the bony fingers of Death, come knocking. I kept watch most of the night, and shivered each time I heard the wind, the clatter of carriage wheels, or soldiers out singing their sad barroom songs on the Ferry Road.

You may wonder it never occurred to me New-York might constitute not another realm but another place of habitation; I can tell you only, it did not. Death was everywhere, and the natural direction in which my mind turned. As you must recall from your own girlhood, our yard was littered in all seasons with the half-et corpses of birds, attacked by who knew what neighbourhood predators. On one occasion, I watched a dead squirrel sink in upon itself day by day, & slowly reveal its armature of chalky bone. I learned of my mother that when a woman grew large with child, then appeared about town slender, sad-eyed, and unencumbered, it meant her baby had gone straight from her womb to the churchyard, instead of stopping at the cradle prepared for it; and I heard Cornelis Luquer's shrieks rise up from the noisy river when his brother Nicolaas was drowned in a boating accident. His father, also called Nicolaas, enlisted the aid of the New-York & Brookland fishermen, who dredged the river with nets until the small, red-headed body of Mr. Luquer's namesake was found. It seemed I saw the dead as often as I saw the living: their mandibles bound to their skulls with strips of linen, their hands slack, their skin oaty as dishwater whether they'd been soldiers or widows, mothers or children, struck down by illness, injury, mishap, or age. Domine Syrtis mumbled over them and consigned them to the soil; beyond that, no one would entrust me with any but the vaguest explanation of where they went, once they'd cast off from these shores.

No, dear Recompense, I do not know how I could have done anything but what I did, which was to set myself with renewed vigour to uncover what part of the Other Side I regarded, across the water, that I might know if, with a suitable measure of trembling awe, I'd be able to spy my Daddy, once he went there for keeps. That I could'n't tell what I look'd at,—whether it was Heaven or the other place, disquieted me,
and I briefly nursed the awful suspicion that my parents had been correct, and all the dead, both good & evil, went to the same destination. But no theology I'd heard of supported such a theory. To entertain it felt as if I stood on the edge of a precipice, and I could not reckon how far I might plummet, therefrom. No, it had to be one or the other; and if Heaven was as free from want as the domine described it, then the New-Yorkers' insatiable need of gin & fruit meant they were living in Hell. I could not guess where God resided, but I figured dead sinners slipped down to van Nostrand's landing in the dark of night, paid off their grim ferryman in shells, boarded his Indian
canoo
, and made their whispering progress across the water. If I could muster the courage to wander out alone one night, I would see it with my own eyes.

While the mouse-brown Livingston daughters set traps for chipmunks & coddled their dolls, I stood watch on the fence each time my father set out on a barge to deliver his wares. He could not understand why I'd hug him so fiercely before he left, and he'd return home, inevitably, that same afternoon, with the scent of fried food and pipe smoke in his hair, and something stowed in his pocket for me;—some sweet, or fruit, or picture pamphlet. These gifts undid me, so great was my desire for them, and so equally great my fear of his truck with the shades. When I'd look at the peach with tears in my eyes, he'd rumple my hair, call me a
silly little goat
, and head over to the pump to wash. Any gift that was not perishable, I took to my room, where I lifted up the one loose plank on the floor, just as you did,—I know you thought without my knowledge,—when you were a girl; and tucked it in for safekeeping.

I observed the busy wharves of New-York with care. I reasoned the damned must have been travelling thither from everywhere around, the
wampum
grounds to the east and Pavonia to the west; why else should they have needed everything in such vast quantities? This convocation of the accursed also surely explained why so many ships were sunk in Henry Hudson's River and up at Hell Gate, and children like Nicolaas swept off in the current of our own tidal straits. It only stood to reason that those eternally condemned would seek to churn up our waters; and this was the first thing made me think we wanted a bridge from here to there. If the living were blind to the spirit boats, they were much imperiled by them; & while I did not suppose one could cajole the dead
to use some other mode of transport, it did seem possible to get my father, on his delivery trips, up out of harm's way. If he could cross by bridge, I reckoned, he could avoid the danger of the water, and perhaps simply fling the goods over to the Other Side, never leaving so much as a hair or a footprint in the Land of the Shades. I could not think how he'd get past having to take their money.

There were precious few bridges in Brookland, then as now,—none of any magnitude in the colonies. Had I known enough of the topick to study the bridges of the mother country, I'd have learned that a structure of a hundred feet in length was considered a prodigious span. I was no more than five years of age, but I resolved in my childish way to learn what I could of building, to store up against future use. I began following your grandfather around his distillery, asking him to explain the functions of the stills, liquor-backs, chutes, gears, drive belts, & machines. He complied, with a bemused grin on his broad countenance, though the doggedness with which I'd determined to learn these things obviously unnerved him.

Had my parents asked what troubled me, I'd have told them, and all the vapours would have been dispelled; but they did not ask. For reasons of friendship & a perverse understanding of loyalty, my mother refused to hire any other help while Johanna yet lived; and as Johanna was next to no assistance to her, the sheer work of the house kept her grim-faced & busy the day long. Managing our household also seemed to cost my mother an inordinate lot of fret. Mrs. Livingston, after all, had
two
daughters, yet still found time to hang over the open top of her Dutch door when a neighbour passed by with gossip. Mother spared herself no such luxury and did not appear to have any such friends, and I sensed she had neither time for nor interest in my moods. Father, more ample in all directions, brought home ribands and books from Fly Market, and would lean back in his chair & spin me yarns that would have banished the shades from some other girl; and he ever addressed me with a smile whose import, I knew, was to coax me to do likewise. Yet his efforts did not strike their mark. I remain'd fixed on my own line of thought until, at last, I must have become impossible to abide, for Mother scrubbed me with a brush and brought me to the domine for counsel. She did'n't tell me why, but I was'n't stupid: I could guess.

When we arrived, the rectory stank of pickled herring. The domine,
his chin hidden behind his tall collar, exhaled it on his breath. My mother described my melancholia with expressive gestures of the hands. I sat on my own fingers, lest they fly out to cover my nose. The domine worried his thatchy beard, & said,—Well,
mein Schmetterling
, leaning toward me. I sat tighter on my hands. It was his habit, when not muttering in Dutch, to pepper his conversation thus with German. In later years I unkindly thought he did this to show any who might be unsure on this point that he was university educated, but at the time, it was my simple misfortune to be either mystified or irked by his every turn of phrase. He was Brookland's only minister, so even the child of atheists could not escape him, but I wished he could be less a fishy old dodderer and, if naught else, a stern avenger like my Pappy, the Reverend Mr. Elihu Juster Winship, whom I'd met the previous autumn.

My father, set at long last on making amends with him, had taken me north to Massachusetts Colony, through fields and tracts of woodland that smelled sharply of fallen leaves. We'd passed what seemed hundreds of encampments of soldiers, ours and the Crown's, along the way. Their tents would cluster in a field like a flock of geese come down for the night; and on two occasions Father had stopped to bestow casks of gin on ragged battalions of the Continental Army, who'd given such ululations of thanks I'd gripped tight to my father's leg & steeled myself against being scalped. To Father's surprise, I'd liked my grim old Pappy well enough, preaching and all. Your great-grandfather's sermons were so stingy of human affection they'd shriveled his lips to a permanent pucker, as if he had an unripe persimmon forever upon his tongue; yet he had a great deal of rhetoric at his command. If his orations were full to overflowing with hellfire, at least they were'n't dull as a snowstorm Sunday: They made a child stand up straight. I feared the perdition to which he claimed I & my dark humour were headed, but I almost liked the thrill of contemplating where my ultimate destination might be. Daddy, meanwhile, was full of tales about him,—how he'd raised his children with nary a toy but a worn-out boot, to which Father referred with alternating affection and disgust, calling it
Bootie
; the result of which, I deduced, was that he'd grown into a man who could not refuse a measure of port, and who, though engaged in a grubby business, was known for his attention to the cut of his clothes.

But I should return to Domine Syrtis, who'd been speaking all this
while, and whose fat servant, Jannetje, had deposited a plate of warm aniseed
koekjes
in front of me, though she surely knew I had not been brought in for good behaviour.

—Und so, mein Schmetterling
, Syrtis was saying. To mask the smell of his breath, I ate the
koekjes
quickly, barely swallowing one before inserting the next.—I do not blame your Mamma for fearing all that care upon your brow. But I daresay, Mrs. Winship, he tittered, if a child be born with morbid preoccupations, so much the less work for the Church, later on! He was still chirruping at his own fine sense of humour.

My mother raised her thin eyebrows.—You think it well she should be so glum? You think it healthy? I choked on an oversized mouthful, and instead of patting my back, she slapped my wrist when I reached for another
koekje
.

—Prudence is a good, God-fearing child, he said. He smiled, showing me his yellow teeth. I tried to smile back as I worked the dry meal in my mouth. Jannetje, more empathetick than my mother, gave me a mug of cool cider. He went on—If you seek a course of action, I suggest instruction in needlework. Busy hands will keep her from despond!

Mother thanked him, thanked Jannetje, and drew me so quickly from the rectory, a hail of crumbs sprang from my lap to the floor. She rarely pulled me so, though I saw other mothers do it; and when I looked up at her, I could see her brown eyes were slick with sadness or anger.—I'm sorry I ate so quickly, I offered. As this did not make her slacken her pace, I told her I would'n't mind learning to knit.

—Please! she replied, & tossed a stray frizzled curl off her face.

Two of the King's men, currying their horses in front of the Livingston house, whistled to us as we passed, and one doffed his cap to my mother. I was too young to understand the politicks of the rebellion, but knew that my parents, unlike many of the neighbours (whom Daddy said were either too Dutch or too apathetick to care), sided with the revolutionaries. My parents were popular with His Majesty's troops anyway, as they supplied to Joe Loosely's tavern,—known then alternately for its location as the Ferry Tavern, for its construction as the Old Stone, and for its beautifully painted sign as the King's Arms,—a gin rumoured to be as tasty as any across the sea, and guaranteed to
wallop its consumer. If I awakened before my parents, I sometimes winced to find a rabbit or grouse hanging by its legs from our
stoep
beams; a gift from the Fourth Prince of Wales, who took their guns out for late-night carousing. Mother nodded curtly to the soldiers, as if they were interrupting her thoughts, and continued on in silence until we reached the head of Joralemon's Lane. Then, bending down to me, she said, in an evener tone,—He's never been sad a day in his life, and he's foolish to think it's so simple. That's all.