Johnny Tremain (15 page)

After that Johnny began to watch himself. For the first time he learned to think before he spoke. He counted ten that day he delivered a paper at Sam Adams's big shabby house down on Purchase Street and the black girl flung dishwater out of the kitchen door without looking, and soaked him. If he had not counted ten, he would have told her what he thought of her, black folk in general, and thrown in a few cutting remarks about her master—the most powerful man in Boston. But counting ten had its rewards. Sukey apologized handsomely. In the past he had never given anyone time to apologize. Her 'oh, little master, I'se so sorry! Now you just step right into de kitchen and I'll dry up dem close—and you can eat an apple pie as I dries,' pleased him. And in the kitchen sat Sam Adams himself, inkhorn and papers before him. He had a kind face, furrowed, quizzical, crooked-browed. As Sukey dried and Johnny ate his pie, Mr. Adams watched him, noted him, marked him, said little. But ever after when Johnny came to Sam Adams's house, he was invited in and the great leader of the gathering rebellion would talk with him in that man-to-man fashion which won so many hearts. He also began to employ him and Goblin to do express riding for the Boston Committee of Correspondence. All this because Johnny had counted ten. Rab was right. There was no point in going off 'half-cocked.'

Twice that fall he saw Rab moved out of his customary reserve. Johnny always spent Friday night with Rab's folks at Lexington. There were hundreds of fine acres called 'Silsbee's Cove.' Old Grandsire, who had brought Rab up, lived in the big house, but he had sons, grandsons, nephews, close about him. Grandsire, Major Silsbee, was confined mostly to his chair. An old wound he had received fighting forty years ago in the French and Indian Wars had stiffened up on him.

At the end of harvest the Silsbees had a dance in Grandsire's big barn. There were at least twenty Silsbees there and both Johnny and Rab came out from Boston. The tall, powerfully built, silent Silsbee men were easy to pick out from among the neighbors and friends invited, but Grandsire and Rab were more completely Silsbees than anyone else.

At this country dance Johnny for the first time saw Rab move suddenly into action. He flung himself into the dancing. Johnny thought in amazement how nonchalant and even sluggish Rab could seem about the printing shop, and yet he did his work with a machine-like perfection. Now he saw the dark eyes glowing and the white teeth flash. It was amazing that an old fiddle in Grandsire's hands and the old voice calling, 'Gents 'round the Ladies—Ladies 'round the Gents' could work such a change in him. He had stepped out of his imperturbable usual self. Here was a Rab Johnny had always known existed, but had never before seen. All the Lin-das and Betsys, Pollys, Peggys, and Sallys of Lexington were clamoring to stand up with him. He loved to dance, and seemingly all the girls loved him and he all the girls. Johnny, two years younger, noticed with disapproval.

One other thing happened at that barn dance that made a great impression on Johnny. He forget entirely about his hand. Although in the reels and jigs they danced, every moment a different girl was clinging to it, none of them seemed to notice. Johnny spoke of this fact to Rab as they undressed at Grandsire's. The Boston girls (he was thinking of Isannah's words—such cruel words he had never even told Rab) had said his hand disgusted them. He wasn't to touch them with it.

'It is you who put the idea in their heads,' said Rab, pulling off his shirt. 'You know you usually go about with that hand in your pocket, looking as if you had an imp of Hell hidden away, and then someone asks you and you pull it out with a slow flourish, as if you said, "This is the most disgusting thing you ever saw." No wonder you scare everybody. Tonight happens you just forgot.'

The other time he saw Rab moved out of himself was a few days later. The Webb twins were timid, weakly little fellows, natural butts for any bullies. They never seemed to need any company except each other and their cat. Mrs. Lorne one day sent them to the butcher for stew meat, and they, thinking it was an errand a cat might enjoy, carried her with them. The butcher's boy was a well-known tyrant. He grabbed the Webbs' cat, trussed her, hung her up by her heels to a hook, and began to sharpen his knife. He was going to butcher her, skin her, and give the carcass to the Webbs for stew meat. The butcher sat by and roared with laughter at the frantic children's tears and cries.

Rab heard the terrified screams of the little boys. He rescued the cat, who was the first to get home, with the Webbs on her heels. Next he began on the butcher's boy. By then Johnny had arrived. Together they took on the butcher, his oldest son, the butcher's wife, armed with boiling water she had prepared for scalding pigs, her mother, and a passer-by. Yet before the constable had arrived, Rab was out of it, back cleaning his press, and he had got Johnny out of it, too. Johnny had a black eye, a lame shoulder, a torn shirt, a bite in his wrist—that was the butcher's wife's mother; she had good teeth for seventy. Rab had nothing except an uncommonly high color in his face and a look of intense pleasure. It was strange that a boy who could fight like that and enjoy it so intensely never quarreled, never fought, and he had almost nothing to say about this really Homeric battle. But for days afterward Johnny would see a look of dreamy content in his eyes, a slow smile form absent-mindedly on his lips. Rab was thinking of the fun he and Johnny had had at the butcher's shop. All he would say was, 'We certainly made hash of
that
shop.' The boy was a born fighter—ferocious, utterly fearless, quick and powerful—but he didn't fight often and he hadn't much to say afterward.

Seemingly Silsbees were like that. Johnny had already seen a pack of them out at Lexington, and there over at the Lornes was Rabbit repeating the old pattern. One day Aunt Lorne came in as Johnny sat reading, with the baby in her arms.

For once she looked a little discouraged. 'My land, I don't know what's wrong with baby. There's something—and he won't tell me—'

'Isn't he pretty young to tell much?'

'Oh, no, no. Other babies can tell you whether it's gas or a pin, or milk souring on them. But he's a real Silsbee, and they never do, you know.'

'Aren't you a Silsbee too?'

'Me? Oh, no. Thank Heaven, it skipped me. Look at my red hair—and my build. I'm just like Mother—a mere Wheeler. I can say what hurts me—sometimes before I'm hurt. Those Silsbees—they just about can't. They don't tell anything, but they are about the best men ever lived. If you'll just learn to take 'em or leave 'em.'

Johnny was learning to 'take or leave' Rab.

O
N
S
UNDAYS
the boys might relax a little, breakfast when they pleased, only they must turn up clean and shining in time to go to church with Aunt and Uncle and listen to the inflammatory Reverend Sam Cooper. Doctor Cooper was putting more politics than gospel into his sermons that fall and more fear of 'taxation without representation' than God into his congregation.

England had, by the fall of 1773, gone far in adjusting the grievances of her American colonies. But she insisted upon a small tax on tea. Little money would be collected by this tax. It worked no hardship on the people's pocketbooks: only threepence the pound. The stubborn colonists, who were insisting they would not be taxed unless they could vote for the men who taxed them, would hardly realize that the tax had been paid by the East India Company in London before the tea was shipped over here. After all, thought Parliament, the Americans were yokels and farmers—not political thinkers. And the East India tea, even after that tax was paid, would be better and cheaper than any the Americans ever had. Weren't the Americans, after all, human beings? Wouldn't they care more for their pocketbooks than their principles?

Shivering—for the last week in November was bitterly cold—Johnny built up the fire in the attic. From the back window he could see that the roofs of the Afric Queen were white with frost.

A sharp rat-tat on the shop door below woke Rab.

'What time's it?' he grumbled, as people do who think they are disturbed too early Sunday morning.

'Seven and past. I'll see what's up.'

It was Sam Adams himself. When either cold or excited, his palsy increased. His head and hands were shaking. But his strong, seamed face, which always looked cheerful, today looked radiant. Sam Adams was so pleased that Johnny, a little naively, thought he must have word that Parliament had backed down again. The expected tea ships had not sailed.

'Look you, Johnny. I know it's Lord's Day, but there's a placard I must have printed and posted secretly tonight. The Sons of Liberty will take care of the posting, but Mr. Lorne must see to the printing. Could you run across and ask him to step over? And Rab—where's he?'

Rab was coming down the ladder.

'What's up?' said Rab sleepily.

'The first of the tea ships, the
Dartmouth,
is entering the harbor. She'll be at Castle Island by nightfall.'

'So they dared send them?'

'Yes.'

'And the first has come?'

'Yes. God give us strength to resist. That tea cannot be allowed to land.'

When Johnny got back with Mr. Lorne, Rab had Mr. Adams's text in his hands, reading it as a printer reads, thinking first of spacing and capitals, not of the meaning.

'I can set that in no time. Two hundred copies? They'll be fairly dry by nightfall.'

'Ah, Mr. Lorne,' said Adams, shaking hands, 'without you printers the cause of liberty would be lost forever.'

'Without you'—Mr. Lorne's voice shook with emotion—'there would not have been any belief in liberty to lose. I will, as always, do anything—everything you wish.'

'I got word before dawn. It's the
Dartmouth
and she will be as far as Castle Island by nightfall. If that tea is landed—if that tax is paid—everything is lost. The selectmen will meet all day today and I am calling a mass meeting for tomorrow. This is the placard I will put up.'

He took it from Rab's hands and read:

 

Friends! Brethren! Countrymen! That worst of Plagues, the detested tea shipped for this Port by the East India Company, is now arrived in the Harbour: the hour of destruction, of manly opposition to the machinations of Tyranny, stares you in the Face; Every Friend to his Country, to Himself, and to Posterity, is now called upon to meet at Faneuil Hall, at nine o'clock this day [that, of course, is tomorrow Monday], at which time the bells will ring to make united and successful resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of Administration.... Boston, Nov. 29, 1773.

 

Then he said quietly: 'Up to the last moment—up to the eleventh hour, we will beg the Governor's permission for the ships' return to London with their cargo. We have twenty days.'

Johnny knew that by law any cargo that was not unloaded within twenty days might be seized by the custom-house and sold at auction.

'Mr. Lorne, needless to say the Observers will meet tonight. There are
private
decisions to be made before the mass meeting tomorrow at nine.'

Johnny pricked up his ears. Ever since he had come to Mr. Lorne's (and Rab said he might be trusted with anything—possibly with men's lives) he had now and then summoned the members of the Observers' Club. They were so close to treason they kept no list of members. Rab made Johnny memorize the twenty-two names. They met in Rab and Johnny's attic.

'Johnny,' said Mr. Lorne, anxious and overanxious to please Mr. Adams, 'start right out.'

'No, sir, if you please. Noon will be better. That will give the members time to get home from church. And as usual, Johnny, make no stir. Simply say, "Mr. So and So owes eight shillings for his newspaper." '

Johnny nodded. That meant the meeting would be tonight at eight o'clock. If he said one pound eight shillings, it would mean the next night at eight. Two pounds, three and six would mean the day after at three-thirty. It gave him a feeling of excitement and pleasure to be even on the fringes of great, secret, dangerous events.