Johnny Tremain (6 page)

Johnny took the cracked crucible in his trusting hands, put in it silver ingots, set it on top of the furnace.

Cilla flew in. 'Ma, there's a man looking at our chimney.'

'How's he dressed?'

'Seafaring man.'

'No seafaring man ever objected to a little Sabbath-breaking. But mind if you see any deacons or constables.'

The work went on.

Isannah sat with the cat in her lap. 'Johnny's going to Hell,' she said firmly. Johnny himself thought this was possible.

He called to Mrs. Lapham to 'look sharp' and put the old silver turnip watch where he could see it. The silver must be run at a certain speed and be allowed to cool for just so long.

Mrs. Lapham was so slavishly eager to help him, he almost felt fond of her. He did not notice Dusty and Dove snickering in a corner.

Some of the beeswax he had used for his models had been left too near the furnace. It had melted and run over the floor. Johnny had been taught to clean up as he went along, but today he was in too much of a hurry to bother.

'Johnny,' cried Mrs. Lapham, 'isn't it time to pour? Look, the silver is melted and begun to wink.' It was true.

He moved forward delicately, his right hand outstretched. The crucible began to settle—collapse, the silver was running over the top of the furnace like spilled milk. Johnny jumped toward it, his right hand still outstretched. Something happened, he never knew exactly what. His feet went out from under him. His hand came down on the top of the furnace.

The burn was so terrible he at first felt no pain, but stood stupidly looking at his hand. For one second, before the metal cooled, the inside of his right hand, from wrist to fingertips, was coated with solid silver. He looked at the back of his hand. It was as always. Then he smelled burned flesh. The room blackened and tipped around him. He heard a roaring in his ears.

When he came to, he was stretched out upon the floor. Dorcas was trying to pour brandy down his throat. Mrs. Lapham had plunged the burned hand into a panful of flour and was yelling at Madge to hurry with her bread poultice.

He saw Cilla's face. It was literally green. 'Ma,' she said, licking her white lips, 'shall I run for Doctor Warren?'

'No—no ... oh, wait, I've got to think. I don't want any of them doctors to know we was breaking Sabbath Day. And we don't need no doctor for just a burn. Cilla, you run down the wharf and you fetch that old midwife, Gran' Hopper. These old women know better than any doctor how to cure things like this. Johnny, how you feel?'

'All right.'

'Hurt yet?'

'Not yet.'

He knew it would later.

Johnny lay in the 'birth and death room.' This was hardly more than a closet with a tiny window off the kitchen, used for storage except in times of sickness. His hand had been done up in a linseed poultice. The smell of the linseed was stifling, and now, on the second day, the pain had really begun. His arm throbbed to the shoulder. Gran' Hopper was in the kitchen, talking to Mrs. Lapham.

'Mind you keep that poultice wet. Just leave it wrapped up and wet it now and then with lime water. There's more luck than anything else in things like this is. If it don't come along good, I'll make a charm.'

Not many years before, Gran' Hopper would have been hanged for a witch. She had the traditional venerable years, the toothless cackle, the mustache. Nor was she above resorting to charms. But she had had vast experience. No doctor in Boston knew more than she about midwifery and children's diseases. So far she had done as well as any of them, except for one thing. The hand had been allowed to draw together—turn in on itself. It was less painful than if it had been held out flat.

By the fourth day ulceration had set in. This was considered Nature's way of healing an injury. Gran' Hopper gave him laudanum and more laudanum. There followed drowsy days and nights that ran together, a ceaseless roaring in the ears. There was nothing left of him but the pain and the drug.

The fever abated and with it the doses of the drug. Johnny had not once looked at his hand since he had stood before the furnace and seen it lined with silver. Gran' Hopper said on the next day she would unwrap it and see, as she cheerfully put it, 'what was left.'

Thus far the pain and the drug and the fever had dulled his mind. He had not thought about the future, for of what use to anyone was a cripple-handed silversmith? But that night Gran' Hopper's words haunted him. Next day she would see 'what was left.'

He was utterly unprepared for the sight of his hand when finally it was unwrapped and lay in the midwife's aproned lap. Mrs. Lapham, Madge, Dorcas, all had crowded into the little birth and death room. Cilla and Isannah were in the kitchen, too frightened to go near him.

'My!' said Madge, 'isn't that funny-looking? The top part, Johnny, looks all right, although a little narrow, but, Johnny, your thumb and palm have grown together.'

This was true. He bent and twisted his fingers. He could not get the thumb to meet the forefinger. Such a hand was completely useless. For the first time he faced the fact that his hand was crippled.

'Oh, let me
see!'
Dorcas was leaning over him. She gave her most elegant little screech of horror, just like a great lady who has seen a mouse.

'My!' said Mrs. Lapham, 'that's worse than anything I had imagined. Now isn't that a shame! Bright boy like Johnny just ruined. No more good than a horse with sprung knees.'

Johnny did not stay to hear more. That morning he had dressed (with Mrs. Lapham's competent help) for the first time. He got up, stood facing them stiffly, his bad hand jammed into his breeches pocket.

'I'm going out,' he said thickly.

Cilla and Isannah sat close together in a frightened huddle, staring at him, not daring to speak. He said rudely, 'You should have come in too—and seen the fun.'

Cilla gaped at him, tried to say something, but only swallowed.

'You two—sitting there—looking like a couple of fishes.'

He slammed the front door after him. He had always been bad about slamming doors. In the fresh air he felt better. He pretended not to hear Mrs. Lapham calling him from a window to come right back. All Fish Street could hear when Mrs. Lapham called. He paid no heed.

He walked all over Boston, his hand thrust deep in his breeches pocket. Instinctively he wanted to tire himself out (which was easy in his weakened condition) so he could not think.

When he came back, there was something queer about the silence of the kitchen. No one reproved him because he had disobeyed Mrs. Lapham. He knew they had been talking about him.

Cilla, for one of the first times in her life, tried to be polite to him.

'Oh, Johnny,' she whispered, 'I'm sorrier than I was ever sorry before.'

Isannah said, 'Is it true, like Ma says, you'll be only good for picking rags?'

Cilla turned on Isannah. 'You're crazy! Johnny isn't going to pick rags ... But oh, Johnny, it's so awful and I'm so sorry and...'

Johnny's face was crimson. 'Will you stop talking about it!'

Isannah went on—' Madge says it looks awful...'

'If either of you girls,' he stormed, 'ever mention that I've even got a hand, I'll ... I'll ... just get on a ship and never come back. I'm not going to have you mucking about with your infernal cry-baby "Oh how dreadfuls." '

So he went to the shop.

He saw with anger that Dove was sitting at his bench, daring to use his tools. He had not been in the shop for a month. Of course it should be expected that Dove would use his bench—for a little while—just until he was back at it himself.

Mr. Lapham had looked up from his work, blinked gently, shook his head and sighed. Dusty was making a terrific din in one corner.

Johnny stood and watched Dove's clumsy work as long as he could in silence. At last he burst out.

'Dove, don't hold your crimping iron like that...'

Dove leaned back. His fat, white face grinned up at him with exaggerated innocence.

'Thank you, Master Johnny. I know I'm not as good as you are. Won't you please to show me just how I should hold my crimping iron?'

Johnny walked out of the shop by the door leading to the wharf. He'd never show anybody again how to hold a crimping iron. If you can't do, you had best shut up. He started to slam the door, thought better of it. If you can't do, you'd best not slam doors.

So he strolled the length of the wharf. There was a big ship in from Jamaica. He idly watched porters rolling barrels of molasses out of its hold. A sailor was trying to sell an old lady a parrot. He saw John Hancock standing in a group of men. The sugar basin had never been delivered. When Mr. Lapham had discovered the evil that had gone on in his absence and the terrible punishment God had meted out to Johnny Tremain, he had ordered the whole thing melted down and he himself had gone over to Mr. Hancock, returned the cream pitcher, and merely said he had found it impossible to make a sugar basin. No explanation.

The boy was accustomed to working from eight to twelve, sometimes fourteen hours in a day. He had no holidays, no Saturday afternoons. He had often imagined to himself the pleasure it would be just to stroll once down Hancock's Wharf, as he was strolling now. Nothing to do. His hands in his pockets. Other boys—friends of his—would look up from their work, envy his idleness. Here and there he did see a familiar face. He believed every one of them was talking about his burn—pitying him. There was not a boy on the wharf Johnny did not know. He had made friends with some and enemies of others, and had played or fought with all of them. He saw Saul and Dicer packing salt herrings in a tub; Andy, his leather thimble strapped to his palm, sewing a sail; Tom Drinker (the local bully) coopering a barrel. This was Johnny's world, but now he walked through it an alien. They knew what had happened. They did not envy Johnny's idleness. He saw one nudge another. They were whispering about him—daring to pity him. Dicer's master, the herring-pickler, yelled some kind remark to him, but Johnny did not answer. Seemingly in one month he had become a stranger, an outcast on Hancock's Wharf. He was maimed and they were whole.

At the end of the wharf, under the derrick used for unloading the largaest ships, he stripped off his clothes and dove into the water. There was not another working boy in Boston who was out swimming in the middle of the afternoon. Only once or twice in a summer—on days of unendurable heat, teachers dismissed school, masters closed shops, and the boys ran down to the wharves to swim. Sometimes, like Mr. Lapham's boys, they swam secretly, silently, on Sunday afternoons, but usually only after dusk had fallen and the day's work was over.

Johnny dove and swam. But it was curious to be alone. He did not like the feeling of being thus cut off from his normal life.

Yet one thing gave him great pleasure. Once in the water, his bad hand was as good as the other. Swimming, he could forget it.

At first Mrs. Lapham tended to humor the 'poor boy.' As he preferred the birth and death room to the attic with Dove and Dusty, she had let him stay on. He had never in all his life slept in a bed alone—much less a whole room. He wanted to be alone.

There was one trouble with his new quarters. When Mrs. Lapham came down to start breakfast, she always began by getting him up.

'Get into your clothes—you lazy boy. Stop by at Deacon Parson's for a quart of milk. Get to the town pump.'

Soon enough she was addressing him as a 'lazy good-for-nothing,' a 'lug-a-bed,' a 'worthless limb of Satan.' Such words poured out of her absent-mindedly, but never in the old days had she called Johnny such names.

The boy least necessary in the shop had always done chores. Now both Dove and Dusty were more valuable than Johnny Tremain. Every morning he put on the heavy wooden yoke, trudged over to North Square for drinking water. Now for the first time he learned to handle a broom properly. He carried in charcoal for the annealing furnace in the shop and wood for the cooking hearth in the kitchen, and as he moved restlessly about doing (and often failing to do) this humble work, Cilla and Isannah watched him and said little. Never a single insult. He had made it clear to them he wanted to be left alone.

Madge and Dorcas found innumerable small tasks for him, now he 'wasn't doing anything.' Once fat Madge made him sit before her, holding a skein of yarn from which she wound a ball. He was miserable with his crippled hand stretched out for all the world to see. When she mentioned it, he threw the yarn at her head and walked off.

One day Mr. Lapham called to him and led him to a bench under the old willow behind the coal house. The old man had never once berated him for Sabbath-breaking, never reminded him how often he had pointed out that pride goeth before a fall.

'My boy,' he said mildly, 'soon it will be September. Summer is over.' Johnny nodded. 'And I feel I must talk with you. When I signed for you, Johnny, there was a mutual contract between your mother and myself. She's dead, so the contract is now between you and me. I promised to feed and clothe you, keep you in good discipline, and as far as your capacity permitted to teach you the silversmith's arts and mysteries.... I ... I never had a boy so quick to teach, but ... And you promised to serve me diligently for seven years, to keep my secrets and my honor. You've done all that, Johnny. But ... but now ... I can't keep my contract with you. I can't teach a cripple-handed boy to be a silversmith.'

Johnny said nothing.

'Mrs. L. is right,' the old man went on.

'You mean she wants you to get rid of me?'

'Not exactly, but she does think it is an extravagance for a poor household to keep a boy just for chores. But I've told her'—there was an unexpected glint of determination in the groping old eyes—'I've told her as long as you wish you are to stay with us. I won't ever ... turn you out. I mind the time your mother came to my shop with you ... she was a sweet lady ... very genteel. She said your heart was fastened on being a silversmith. She said you was a bright boy—you always was that. Now, Johnny, it's for your own good I'm talking to you. You've got to learn another way of supporting yourself. I want you to go around, look about the shops, and find out a respectable trade where a bad hand won't matter too much. You're a bright boy, Johnny. Maybe a ropemaker or a cooper or a weaver could teach you his craft. That hand of yours will soon be strong enough, but will always be sort of doubled in on itself.'