“If I don’t?”
“You ever seen a honey wagon let go on your lawn? Ugliest thing you ever saw. Shit everywhere, toilet paper, Tampax, used rubbers. Christ knows what’s in
them
these days.”
The Humpster started the truck. A puff of blue exhaust billowed out.
Blue stepped onto the running board and, for the first time, stopped smiling. “Straighten the old man out before that town meetin’.”
Janice came running out to say goodbye.
Geoff told her, “Your father’s cousin is charming me.”
As Blue climbed into the cab, she shook his hand. “All his charm is in his bulldozers.”
“Without bulldozers, the world’s got no use for architects, honey.”
Geoff slammed the door after him.
“A used rubber layin’ in a pile of shit.” Blue shook his head. “Make you give up sex for a year.”
Geoff and Janice watched the truck rumble out to the road. The Humpster couldn’t make the turn on the first try, or on the second. So the words “stupid son of a bitch” got louder, and his face got redder. Finally Blue jumped out and directed the truck, with gestures and more “stupid son of a bitches,” out the driveway and down the access road.
“If I thought you had any of his genes, I’d give up sex for
life.”
Geoff climbed into the Chevy. “He and his son make me hope there
is
a
Mayflower
log.”
She reached through the car window and put her hand on the wheel. “Go chasing it, and you
will
give up sex—with me, anyway.”
“An idle threat, after this morning.”
“Low blow.”
“Sorry.” He threw the car in gear and grinned like a kid. “Let’s run away like we used to. Find some sand dune and just… do it all day long.”
She folded her arms and looked over her shoulder at the house. The sound of a Warner Brothers cartoon could be heard through the screen door.
“No good, huh?”
“That’s the past. The future’s staring you in the face. And where are you going?”
“To lay this
Mayflower
log stuff to rest.”
“Dammit, Geoff!” She slammed her hand so hard on the car roof that he felt the sound in the bridge of his nose. “This is
just
what I asked you not to do.”
“I can’t always do what you ask, honey.” That was a mistake. He knew the minute he said it. He put on the sunglasses that he used to shield himself from those serious brown eyes of hers.
So she banged her hand on the roof again. “My father and brother are trying to do something for all of us, and you waste time with myths from senile old men?”
He backed down the driveway. A quick retreat. But she walked along beside the car. “You say you can’t always do what I ask, but you
never
do what I ask. When I said ‘No, Geoff, don’t leave Withers and Johnson, there’s not a better architecture firm in Boston—’ ”
“I wasn’t a partner, Jan.” He shifted into drive. They had fought this fight too often already. “I was passed over. Up or out. I was going to do small detailing on big jobs for the rest of my life.”
“The pay was good.”
“The job sucked.”
She turned toward the house.
He called her, but she wouldn’t stop. “After what George read last night, this log has me interested.”
Now she stopped. “Be interested in your family. Helping my father and brother to develop that island should interest you. Whether your kids can flush the toilet should interest you.”
“A book that Samuel Eliot Morison said was worth millions interests me, too. That would buy a lot of septic systems.”
“We only need one.”
“And one day to track the story down. That’s all I’ll take.”
“I said you were a dreamer when you wanted to move us all to Cape Cod. I said I was a damn fool when I went along. But I was wrong.
You’re
the damn fool.” She went inside and slammed the door.
Yes, he thought, all the Bigelows had a stubborn gene. Rake had warned him at Thanksgiving dinner during his junior year at Harvard. Geoff had casually mentioned that he and Dickerson Bigelow’s daughter were taking the same Colonial History class, and he thought she was pretty nice.
Rake had poured gravy onto his stuffing and said, “Be careful. A Bigelow is a person who got all the answers but don’t know any of the questions.”
August 1623
Ezra Bigelow read the sentence: “ ‘For having a child born six weeks before the ordinary time of woman after marriage, fined for uncleanness—’ ”
“Unfair!” cried the mother, and the baby in her arms began to scream.
“Quiet the woman,” Governor Bradford stood on the platform at the center of the settlement, flanked by William Brewster and Ezra Bigelow.
“And the
child,
” added Bigelow.
The sun beat down on Plymouth like God’s all-seeing eye, good reason why half the population chose not to witness the punishment. After all, some had actually
committed
the sin for which Jack Hilyard and his new wife were being sentenced.
“You’ll not quiet a woman of good character,” shouted Elizabeth Hilyard, and the baby began to shriek.
“Easy, Bess,” said Jack from the whipping post, “thou frighten the child.”
“Tell ’em we never knew each other till marriage,” she cried. “Deny the sin!”
“No denial carries weight when the evidence is in your arms,” said Ezra Bigelow.
Jack’s neck was as brown as an Indian’s, the rest of his skin cream white. “Afore the sun broils off me flesh, finish your readin’ and take it with leather. Then pray nature never make a liar of thee.”
“Nature is God’s handmaiden,” answered Bigelow. “She does his biddin’.” And he finished the sentence: “Fined for uncleanness and whipped publicly at the post, then man and wife both to stand in stocks till sunset.”
The whipman assured Jack Hilyard he meant no ill will.
“None taken,” answered Jack. Then he looked at Christopher, now fifteen and naught but hands and feet and sullenness. “Take thy mother inside till this be done.”
Christopher scowled. Jack knew he resented it when anyone called
her
his mother. Secretly he approved of the punishment for
her
.
“I’ll go nowhere.” Elizabeth handed the baby to Christopher. “Take him out of the sun.”
It was clear that Christopher felt less resentment toward his half brother, and no boy wished to see his father’s back stripped, so for once he did as she told him.
And Jack took the punishment bravely. None in the plantation expected otherwise. Though he was loud and rebellious, he had a harping iron for a backbone, even as it was laid bare. With every crack of the whip, he ground his teeth and tried to think on the strange humor of his predicament.
He had fallen in love with Elizabeth as soon as she stepped from the
Fortune
. He was not alone. Widowed on the voyage, this strong-backed young Saint of twenty, with flaxen hair, fair features, and all her teeth, had drawn single men like the marsh drew webfoot foul. And the Brewsters, who took her in, ate quite well of the duck and fish brought to their door by her suitors.
That she chose Jack Hilyard was a source of surprise to all, from the Brewsters to Jack himself. He was eleven years her senior, with a sullen son, but he had built a solid house and had ambitions for this life as well as the next, and both mattered to Elizabeth.
Churchgoing was law in Plymouth, but for Elizabeth, Jack went smiling, read loudly, sang in full voice, and made his son do the same. He no longer spoke of breaking the agreement to go off on his own. And once they were betrothed, he made no attempt to lie with her, though he thought, on some nights, to feel the ghost of Onan take his hand.
It seemed a sad joke, then, that his back was stripped because his wife had been delivered early. It could only be punishment for past sins. Or perhaps the elders, who should have been praying for the life of his weakling infant, were jealous that he had gotten the girl.
Time in the stocks chastened most, but by day’s end, Elizabeth was spewing bitterness. Her wrists were rubbed raw, her back was cramped into a fishhook, and she was ready to renounce all association with the Saints. “I hate ’em. With all me heart.”
“Thou’s a good girl. God knows.” Jack moved his shoulders and told her to do the same. He had stood often in the London stocks, and he knew that the cramps they suffered now were as nothing to what would come when they were released.
“If I saw a priest,” she said, “I’d have him turn me papist, this very minute.”
“None of that, now.” It was the voice of Simeon Bigelow, bringing the key to release them.
The settlement was quiet. Most families were taking the evening meal, and few had interest in the stocks.
“Hasn’t been too bad, then?” said Simeon.
“Mortifyin’,” said Elizabeth.
Jack twisted his neck, like a chicken peeking out of its coop. “Can’t compare to London. There, a man in the stocks suffers scorn and rotten fruit the whole time. In Plymouth, him who’s without sin casts the first stone.” He thought that sounded most Saintly. “Now let us out.”
Simeon shook his head. A sliver of sunlight still sat on the hilltop. “The letter of the law, Jack.”
“Damn your laws, along with your brother,” said Elizabeth. “Me babe cries for the breast.”
Simeon grasped her hands, which protruded from the wood. “Forgive him, Bess. This is a fragile outpost on the edge of blackness. God protects us for he knows we push the blackness back. But if he sees the blackness block out our own light—”
“I done nuffin’ black.”
“God knows, but we have laws. Betimes the laws do hurt, but they show the way.”
“No more sermon, good master. Let me out.”
Just then a man came lumbering down Leyden Street from the blockhouse.
Though he wore motley clothes two sizes too small, he had a familiar face, and Jack thought he recognized the gait, or what he saw in the glance. It was the look of a Londoner, and Jack expected rotten fruit to follow.
“Excuse me, good master,” the man said to Simeon, “but where be the house of Governor Bradford?”
“Weston?” said Jack.
The man stepped closer. His face, covered with bites and bruises and a few more carbuncles, warmed in recognition. “Jack Hilyard. If ever a man ends up in the stocks of Plymouth, ’twould be thee.” He shook the yoked hand.
“Thou be far from London and well worn.”
“Thomas Weston.” William Bradford had come out to see the Hilyards and saw instead his former patron, reduced now to beggary. He looked him up and down, as though in no way surprised. “Uncertain and mutable are the things of this unstable world.”
ii.
The Hilyards ate well that night for all their pains and cramps. Sympathy brought food from many a house. All knew the need for the blindness of the law, but more than one child had been born before a full nine months, and food always eased pain in a hungry place—a baked bass, a bread of corn flour, long beans snapped succulent from the garden, a bucket of clams, a summer-fat duck roasted and still hot, a pudding made from all the kinds of berries growing wild.
“I should stand the stocks more often.” Jack cut up the fish. “Belly cheer and good beer make the pains fly.”
“But not the humiliation.” Elizabeth held the baby to her breast while she served out the squash.
Christopher Hilyard tore silently at the duck.
“For a meal like this, I’d face another
year
like this,” said Weston, downing a draft of beer.
Word was about that the original London Adventurer, for whom few had good to say, had journeyed on foot from the Strawberry Bank trading post at Piscataqua. They might have begrudged him this meal. But he was entitled to some small hospitality… as long as he did not stay.
Weston had made Jack Hilyard’s first harping iron and many more after. When Jack had tired of whaling and moved in with Kate’s fishmongering family, Weston had given Jack a job selling supplies to cooperages. When Weston began to recruit Strangers for the
Mayflower
, he had encouraged Jack.
“Would that I’d picked more like thee for Wessagusset, Jack, and more like these Saints.”
Elizabeth spat out a disgusted laugh.
“Bess…” chided Jack.
“Me face burns from the sun, and me pride burns from the embarrassin’.” She sat. “I would leave here the first chance.”
At that, Christopher looked up.
“After a certain lad led us on a dangerous hunt two years ago,” said Jack, “Ezra Bigelow promised he’d
never
let us go where we wants.”
With his sleeve, Christopher wiped duck grease from his mouth. “I went to meet Indians. Human people like us. Not heads to be mounted on pikes.”
Jack snatched a duck wing from his son’s plate and pushed the succotash toward him. “Mix some beans and corn with that duck, boy, or thou’ll be quackin’ afore dawn.”
“Ezra Bigelow…” Weston chewed on the name along with his fish.
“Bloody hard man,” said Jack.
“Bloody bastard,” said Elizabeth.
“Bess,” said Jack, “that’s no language for—”
“She be right, Jack. Bloody bastard. He sat with Bradford when I spake to the governor.” Weston belched and held out his mug for more beer.
Jack filled it. Elizabeth shifted the baby from one breast to the other so skillfully that the men did not notice. Christopher settled back into silent combat with the duck.
And Weston went on. “I told ’em I needed pelts to sell, to provision meself and the
Swan
, should ever I find her.”
“If the elders give
thee
beaver charity, this colony might mutiny.” Jack pulled a fish bone from his mouth. “The pelts be saved for the next ship. We be in want of clothes and implements.”
“Thou talk like the governor.”
“Him and me has little truck.”
“ ’Cept when he punish us,” said Elizabeth bitterly.
“The governor be polite enough to me,” said Weston, “but Bigelow, he damned me.”
Jack was not one to spare words, even with an old friend who had fallen on hard times. “Thou deserted us, then damned us with sixty worthless beggars who damn near brought the Indians down on us. Thou
deserve
a little damn-in’.”