Becoming Americans (74 page)

      Stephen sat with his son on the pile of lumber where Junior had sat the night before. He was slow to begin; the sins of the son had once been sins of the father.

      "I have made a decision, Son, that you must know today. But let us pray, first."

      Junior made no objection, and bowed his head as his father placed his hand upon it and began to pray. Soon, the hangover and remorse brought Junior to tears and, when his father had stopped praying, the two men held each other for the first time in their lives.

      "You should be with your own children, Son," Stephen began. "And you should have a birthright for them, such as I was not able to bring to you." He stopped. "Not until now."

      Junior raised an eyebrow, then brought it back down.

      "Your mother and I have labored here with the mind to earn and put aside enough to buy land in Carolina that I could leave to you. Your Uncle James has made it possible. Family is our greatest resource in time of need and sorrow. Never forget that. I will miss him, in heaven. I pray for James every night, that he'll one day turn away from his false church."

      Junior was more interested in something other than the talk of family or heaven. He'd been caught by earlier words.

      "Not until now?"

      " I thought I'd have enough in three more years to purchase a good-sized piece of land for my old age. But, as Jacob labored twice to gain his prize, so will I. God tells me to give you the money, now, so that you might purchase the land right away. You need a home for your children. A place to put your roots."

      "Have my own land?"

      Junior was stunned.

      "But not until you wed. A wife must come first," his father said.

      Junior wondered if the morning's despair had been God speaking to him. Yes! He must wed! If Margaret would take him, they must marry soon. Now he had something to offer her. And if not Margaret, then someone. He must have a wife!

      "And plead that Jesus send the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself to you!" his mother emphasized.

      Nancy Williams had come out to join the family discussion. She knew what they were talking about and what had happened the last night.

      "You must be saved from the flesh! Those children must be saved from Mathias, and he convinced of his wrong-thinking! Above all, you must be turned from temptations of the flesh!"

      Stephen looked at his wife and at his son, surprised to see, in both, the same light of wild passion.

      The last Sunday of reading bans for the wedding of Junior Williams and Margaret Biggs was his last week in Deep Creek. It was a happy family week of religious celebration, punctuated by the holiday gathering.

      The weather had turned cold, and guests at Elizabeth Williams's Christmas feast crowded into her house, warmed by the roaring Yule log and the fellowship of family. Only James was absent, and he only for the hour that a quick repair at the mill required—the tides were as demanding as the wind. Light from the fireplace and from all the bayberry candles Elizabeth could gather for the occasion flickered through the haze of smoke and steam. Her pewter was cleaned and laid out, as were the four sets of sparkling glass cups and saucers that she owned, reserved for Grandma Mary and Mister Cherry, Ann Harbut, and Nancy Williams.

      Junior was nostalgic and anxious at the happy occasion. It was unlikely that this scene would ever be repeated. For the first time in his life it touched him that time was quickly passing, and that one day some of these people would be gone. He watched the children playing and wondered if his own were well and happy on this holiday. His nostalgia was surpassed by the prospect of his next day's trip to Suffolk, and that next day's wedding. His mind was brought back to the present by the anger of his cousins.

      "The British soldiers treated father like a servant!" Joseph said to the group he stood with by the fireplace. "One of them knocked his hat off with a sword and spit tobacco at his feet!"

      "It was shameful to see," his brother William added. "It shamed him awful. I'd have sooner worked the mill today, but he wanted to be there by himself."

      "For two hundred feet of lumber! They wouldn't do that in England!"

      The condescending attitudes of the British soldiers had galled the populations of all the colonies that they'd come to save from the French and the Indians. They'd heard reports, but this was the Williamses' first exposure to British soldiers.

      Joseph had taken their brutish treatment of his father personally. The Williamses were Englishmen, too, after all!

      "America's for draining and using, that's all," William said. "Father says there's real trouble ahead if they don't start treating us as brothers"

      "Is that the way they treat family!" Joseph's rage wouldn't cool.

      Pompey burst into the house with a terrible look on his face.

      "Master…. He fell…down the ladder."

      Screams and shouts for help came from across the creek. Elizabeth was the first to burst through the doorway, followed and outpaced by the men.

      Junior was the first to reach the mill. He saw the blacksmith and his wife standing by the open trapdoor to the gears and cranks below. A tool belt dangled from the door. He pushed the couple from the opening and saw his uncle caught between a beam and a crank that was baring down on him.

      The crank had slowed from the resistance of James's body but threatened to move further. James looked to Junior and opened his mouth to speak, but the wheel moved on and blood spurted from his mouth.

Margaret Williams was born to be a wife and mother. Junior realized that soon after they returned to the Sapony house. His children flocked to her as if she were a shiny present he'd brought them from Virginia. The baby, Eliza, cooed, and Sol, the youngest boy, held onto Margaret's leg.

      In fact, Margaret was much like a shiny present, delicate in features and carriage. Junior had discovered the extent of these characteristics when he'd stopped the cart at a farmhouse on the much-traveled road south from the Nansemond port town of Suffolk. He'd held her underneath the straw and they made love for the first time, she with a modesty and reserve that was unlike the unrestrained passion of his first wife. Junior tried to restrain himself but couldn't, afterwards feeling brutish and guilty.

      Mathias was relieved to see his former son-in-law back in Edgecombe, and more than willing to help Junior search-out land to buy. But Junior had returned with plans already made.

      Less than a mile upstream from Father Manning were two hundred acres of unsettled land owned by William Ruffin, of Northampton County. Ruffin had bought the land from a wealthy neighbor, James Pittman, several years earlier, establishing a private title that began prior to Granville's possession of his oneeighth of the province. Ruffin was a Baptist who was unashamed of worldly gain, and he was a friend of Junior's mother. William Ruffin had been Nancy Williams's brother-in-law during her first marriage, and they both belonged to the same congregation in Isle of Wight County, coming to the Particular meeting house from different directions on fifth Sundays.

      The growing denomination of Particular Baptists was strict and severe in its adherence to Calvinistic principles of predestination, and eager that its beliefs be circulated in the congregation of General Baptists. Some of the General congregations were not even insistent that church membership be reserved for the born-again. Ruffin had not been convinced of Junior's selection to the Elect, but his friendship with Nancy, and hopes for an ally amidst the unenlightened Baptists of western Edgecombe, moved him to sell two hundred acres on the north side of the Sapony for twenty pounds of hard Virginia money.

***

Margaret's first child, a daughter they named Elizabeth, was born on a cold March morning of the next year, 1756, as Junior paced outside in heavy rain, deep in memories of the birth that took his Mary.

      Junior's mind often returned to memories of Mary. Although Margaret was still as beautiful as she was that first time he'd seen her in Tom Biggs's house, she was lifeless, somehow. When he lay with her in private, it was like he was the only living person in the room. So unlike his Mary. Elizabeth would never romp in the stream with him, he knew.

      Junior had tired of his new wife quickly. He was bothered by the many ways she differed from his first. She often burned the food. Without the help of his children the garden would have strangled in weeds. She sometimes left the baby lying in its filth. Junior felt forced to speak to her about that, and, as his heat rose, he spoke of many other things. She sank to the floor in tears and remained there until he lifted her and carried her to the bed. He left her there and fetched Elizabeth Manning to tend her, then left for Lamon's Tavern. He increasingly avoided Margaret, except on those drunken nights when he took his privilege with her.

      Tom Harbut arrived soon after Junior did, and after spending a fortnight visiting relatives and friends who'd already settled, he made a pallet in the sleeping loft with Junior's oldest sons and began helping Junior girdle and fell trees. Neighbors pitched-in and, by springtime, there was room for Margaret to plant peas, corn, and other vegetables and herbs for the table and the "physick" chest.

      For some slight, real or imaginary, that Tom inflicted on a man of Corbin's, he found it impossible to buy land in the Granville District. He fell back upon the trade of his father, and worked at crude carpentry with the few tools he'd not sold, sewing the Virginia pounds into a coat for safekeeping.

      He did well from the start. Edgecombe was the most populous of North Carolina's counties, it was said, and there were houses and barns and mills popping-up throughout. Junior soon joined forces with him—partly to avoid his wife—and they quickly accumulated so much corn and tobacco in barter that Junior left his own crop in the field, lacking time and help to tend it.

      Their first trip to Halifax with the hogsheads of tobacco and barrels of corn was an education. An official of the king's weighed their goods and charged his own fee against the price they'd dickered. Another man was there to levy duties, and another charged for use of the dock. There was no pretense to hide the fact that these men—the courthouse ring—were being charged less, or nothing at all, in fees for their own crops.

      In the minds of Junior and Tom, the town was mostly thieves and taverns and high-priced harlots, and by the time the cousins rode the two-wheeled cart back south through the ruts from Halifax, they shared only a few shillings of profit and were planning ways to avoid the town in future. They knew that other men carried their crops to Virginia, where a higher price was paid but where extra duties against Carolina tobacco were still charged. One of many ways used to avoid these duties was to roll the barrels across the province line at out-of-theway places and have Virginia friends or relatives pass them off as their own. A month after that first trip, one of the Ruffin brothers did that for Junior and Tom, charging only one-tenth of the sale price as a tithe for his Particular church. Junior thought it was an awful lot of trouble for a handful of coins, he told Margaret, but Tom could get excited by a pence, he said.

      Junior's children had become his joy in life. When little Mary spoke her first words, he subtly made sure all the neighbors knew of it. The children spent most of their days with their Grandma Manning, while Margaret piddled at her chores. Sometimes he took Sam, Billy, or Stephen along with him to the fields or to a building project. He'd started off by taking only Sam who, at the age of nine, was already responsible and serious. Billy, a year younger, listened to his brother and the two boys worked well together. Stephen, at six, would do anything his brothers asked. All the children were eager to please their father.

      The children fascinated Junior. They weren't anything like he was as a child, he often thought. He and his friends had been competitive. They'd fought, and cursed, and had even gotten drunk by the time they were as big as Sam. But these children were like bees or ants, Junior thought. They ran from place to place together. They took on a task as a team, whether cleaning Margaret's garden, or the house, or stacking staves. They must have learned that from Manning, he'd decided, and worried that they'd learn too much from Manning.

      He did not begrudge the time his children spent in church with their grandfather, but he took them there himself, on many Sundays, although he paid more attention to the proceedings after services than he did to the sermon.

      Any questions that had arisen in the community were discussed and voted on at meeting. There was always discussion, even if it was only to upbraid a tardy member or a weak confession. Everything was agreed upon by vote after the matter had been thrashed out in a meeting. Every man's voice was heard. Everyone was expected to speak his or opinion. Everyone's status was equal. Every speaker's vote was equal. The discussion and the voting were the only part of church that Junior enjoyed. Much of it was funny, when he thought of it.

      Bill Tucker was accused by his father-in-law of over-indulgence in drink. Tucker confessed, in tears, and repented, to the joyful embrace of his wife and friends. An angry neighbor accused Sarah Stancil of over-indulgence with food— to which she happily agreed—but Sarah finally became tearful when convinced of the gravity of her sins. With promises to foreswear gluttony, she was welcomed back into the warmth of fellowship. Adultery was the sin that was most heartily condemned by the pastor and his flock, but redemption from this sin, too, was promised and celebrated after the sincere repentance of the sinner.