Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (26 page)

William left the house one day driven by a particularly violent storm of mortification and rage; he walked and walked and ended, as he always ended, at the wharf, and there he saw the
Wilmington
, bathed in the shine of the gold she’d brought to the Philadelphia streets. In front of the ship the Delaware River stretched toward the horizon as smooth as a well-worn road, leading . . . away. That was all William cared about. It would lead him away.

William found the shipmaster, a taut, sun-blackened man lit by his own fire, whether made up of greed or glory William couldn’t tell and couldn’t care; the shipmaster’s reasons were his as William’s reasons were his, and neither was asked nor offered. The deal was struck and William returned home, sneaking in without speaking to or seeing anyone, going to his room and putting together what he hoped at least faintly resembled a sea kit. He considered and decided that his father, at least, deserved the courtesy of a brief note. In writing the note, a sense of the finality of the words brought on a rush of affection that in truth had seldom waned, and the pen stuttered over the paper, leaving rough starts and stops that William had little time to remedy.
Honored Father,
he wrote.
I’m gone to make my own way.
I’ll not burden you again in this life.
Your devoted son, William.

It was dark by the time William boarded the ship, any aura of gold long gone, the river no longer a bright, glimmering road to fortune but an empty black void, suddenly reminding William of a much smaller boy, a seemingly much bigger ship, a darker night. Who was that servant who’d whisked him away in darkness and taken him aboard that ship? He could no longer remember her face or her name, only the way she’d begun to frighten him. He did remember the early, wild excitement of actually being on a ship, being allowed to steer a ship! Had he understood that a ship tied to a dock didn’t need steering? He doubted it. He’d believed in it. All of it. But next had come that hollowing fear when he realized the servant and even the strange man had disappeared, and he was alone in the dark on the enormous ship with the black water far below him. What next? The crashing relief at the sight of his father coming up the gangway and striding across the deck to scoop him up and take him home.

Much as his father did again aboard the
Wilmington.

Shouldn’t William have foreseen the same old conclusion to the same old play? But this time there was no relief, just more of that burning shame, intensified by a jeering crew and a screaming captain, with William’s father as William’s father always was, the voice in William’s ear as gentle and sensible as warm pudding, the arm around his shoulder as hard and irrefutable as a fireplace crane.

THE EPISODE DID LITTLE
to improve the mood at home. William entered rooms and walked out again if Deborah was the only occupant; he spoke to her, where possible, through his father, or even the baby Sally, deciding the best way to show his stepmother how little he cared if he pleased her or not was to put all his efforts into pleasing Sally. Most of these maneuvers only caused Deborah to lose more and more control of her tongue, which only caused William to act more and more hateful, with the single exception being that he developed a true affection for this little sister, who was fast becoming, in her innocence and ignorance, his best ally.

But it turned out William in fact had another ally, neither innocent nor ignorant: his father. He saw, he heard, he tried and failed to smooth it; in the end he understood that there would be no peace at home with both son and wife under the same roof and he came up with a solution that pleased most parties. He enlisted William in the king’s army.

OH, HOW WILLIAM LOVED
the army! The order, the neatness, the single focus, the chance to succeed and to advance to a legitimate title that drew him honest respect, even from his father. William had achieved the rank of captain, as high as he could advance without a purchased commission, an investment his father was disinclined to undertake, and there it seemed to William that his army career had ended.

But somehow, somewhere, in amongst all the pacifist Quakers of Pennsylvania, William’s father managed to prevail in a plan he’d long nurtured of building defenses along the western frontier; the expedition was actually put forth in the assembly and accepted, and Benjamin Franklin, chief defender of defense, was asked to head it. No one dared object when the father then turned around and enlisted his army captain son to aid him—in fact, to lead him, for what did William’s father know of armies? It was William who planned and executed, but of course on their return to Philadelphia it was the elder Franklin who was praised and cheered, although to give him his due, he asked for none of it, and in fact rode seventy-five miles in two days in order to sneak into town ahead of a parade that was rumored to be forming to honor him. The end result of the expedition? As William remained stopped at captain in the king’s army, his father was made colonel of his own home-grown militia.

But William refused to be stopped at home, where the words
devil child
and
villain
could too easily haunt his days. He began to think of another profession that prized order and rules, that preferred neat rows of books with well-ordered shelves over his father’s method of unclassified piles and unlabeled crates and boxes. With his father’s reluctant permission, and no doubt his stepmother’s relief, he moved out of his father’s house and began to study law with a friend of his father’s named Joseph Galloway.

35
Philadelphia, 1748

DEBORAH FRANKLIN TOOK UP
the letter from Boston and announced without looking at her chart, “One shilling.”

Fulsom fished out his coins and counted. “Ah, Mrs. Franklin, I find myself sixpence short.”

“Then it shall be delivered to you on the morrow in the penny post. To help you in your accounting, that will make it seven pence you’ll need to scrounge out.”

Fulsom stared at her. “I assure you, Mrs. Franklin, you may count me good for the sixpence and give me my letter today. I’ve waited on it a fortnight.”

“Then another day shouldn’t mark so great an addition to your waiting, should it?” Deborah turned to the next customer. “Good day to you, Mr. Hughes. How many do you leave with us? Two for Boston, three hundred ninety miles. We now run three mails a week this time of year; you may expect it to arrive Thursday next. And one for New York, one hundred six miles, that should arrive by Sunday.”

Out of the corner of her eye Deborah observed Fulsom leaving the shop and stopping in the street to lay out his mistreatment to one of the Shippens, not friends of Benjamin’s since he’d organized the militia, but Shippen seemed to hold enough respect for the Franklins—or his mail delivery—to listen without taking a side in it. That was the best Deborah got from Philadelphia society, but it was better than she’d gotten before now, and she liked it. She liked her life. She liked working in the shop with Benjamin so near, she liked those evenings when she had Benjamin’s undivided attention as they discussed the day’s accounts; above all, she liked her daughter, Sally.

It had taken seven long years after the death of Franky for Deborah to bear herself another child. After four years—the length of time it had taken her to get Franky—she decided that God was not through punishing Benjamin for his old sin, and something jagged and unlovely began to grow in her in place of a child: When she looked at William she saw only those old sins and resentments that could never be held to account. But when Sally was born, Deborah could look at her and see all that was good in Benjamin and herself, as if it had been saved up and let free in this one sparkling, amiable child who was sure to win every heart she encountered. Sally was not as pretty as William, but her stolid features and sturdy limbs were Deborah and Benjamin together, and Deborah would insist to any who would listen that Sally was nearly as bright as William ever was. Benjamin was determined that his daughter would learn what a young girl should learn in order to best serve her role in life, but Deborah was determined that she would learn what a young girl might learn of
all
of life; unlike the mother, the daughter would not be left out.

So it was that Deborah sat, taking stock of all that had finally come right with her world just before it all flew apart.

FIRST WAS THE SHOP.
Benjamin came home one night lit up with more than just the milk punch at the tavern; he pulled Deborah out of her chair, spun her around, and kissed her. “Meet your newborn husband,” he said, “fresh out of the printing business forever. I’ve turned it all over to my new partner, Mr. Hall—press, shop,
Gazette—
together
.
”

At first Deborah couldn’t comprehend it. “Turned it all over! What on earth do you mean to do with yourself?”

“I mean to sit back and collect my share of the income from Mr. Hall and otherwise do as I like. Step up and make something useful of myself. Lie down and celebrate it.” He caught up her hands and attempted to tug her toward the bedroom, but Deborah shook herself loose.

“And the post office?”

“William can manage the post office.”

William can manage the post office. William, who would want her help the least of anyone’s in it. “And what of me? What am I to do? Retire to our rooms and—”

“The rooms go with the shop. I’ve rented us a new house on Race Street, away from the bustle of all this commerce, so I may do my thinking in peace.”

“Thinking about
what
?”

“About it all, Debby. About the what and the why and the how and the
what if
.” And as if he suddenly realized how behind he was already in all this thinking, he floated away from her and into his study.

DEBORAH SLEPT LITTLE THAT
night, her mind in turmoil as she attempted to chase after all that Benjamin had said and what it likely meant to her life, but Benjamin appeared to have no such difficulty. He slept and rose at the usual time and went into his study again, until a message arrived that drew him out of it in some haste. Later, when Deborah went into the room to collect his empty cup, she spied a half-finished letter lying on his desk. The letter was addressed to Cadwallader Colden, a frequent correspondent of Benjamin’s in New York.

My Dear Friend,

I am settling my old accounts and hope soon to be quite a master of my own time. I am in a fair way of having no other tasks than such as I shall like to give myself, and of enjoying what I look upon as a great happiness, leisure to read, study, make experiments, and converse at large with such ingenious and worthy men as are pleased to honour me with their friendship or acquaintance, on such points as may produce something for the common benefit of mankind, uninterrupted by the little cares and fatigues of business.

Deborah stood as she was, reading and rereading that letter for some time. What could she make of a life that held no other tasks but those she would like to give herself? She couldn’t begin to imagine such a life, for it required a shadow Deborah to follow her around and do all the rest of the things she would have to abandon in pursuit of her own enjoyment. She knew better than to imagine herself
producing something for the common benefit of mankind,
but as she read through the letter a second time, and a third, she discovered that its beginning was by far the least disturbing part of it.
Reading. Studying. Experimenting. Conversing with ingenious and worthy men.
Where were Deborah and Sally in any of it?

NEXT CAME ELECTRICITY. IT
was true that the move to the new house occupied much of Deborah’s time, but it hardly slowed Benjamin in the plan he’d laid out in his letter. For many years Deborah had gotten used to all the odd things that leaked out of Benjamin’s study and got strewn about the house: a dark cloth and a white one laid side by side on the south windowsill to see which absorbed more heat (the dark one); the dead flies he’d found drowned in his bottle of Madeira and set out on that same sunny windowsill to see if they might revive (some did, some didn’t); the plants that cropped up in every room for the purpose of purifying the air (not so far as Deborah could determine); an empty honey jar hung from the kitchen ceiling on a string that was to have proved something or other about ants if Deborah hadn’t removed it and thrown it out. But now all the experiments were about a single thing: electricity.
Electricity.
Deborah couldn’t comprehend the workings of it, nor could she think of a single use for it; worse, it took up more of Benjamin’s time than press, shop, and post office put together. And worse than that, along with the electricity came William.

William. Deborah had tried with the boy. She had. Perhaps if her own boy had lived, or if William hadn’t been stolen, or if he’d only stop looking at her that way . . . perhaps if William’s
father
would only stop looking at her that way every time she made the slightest correction of the child, as if she were about to hold his hand in a flame. Perhaps if his father would stop fussing over William’s every remark while leaving Sally—and Deborah—to speak only to each other or to the increasing silence. Whatever the cause, William had grown from a spoiled boy to a sullen and angry adolescent, most of his anger directed at Deborah.

William was fifteen and as obstinate as a boy could be—at least around his mother—when he ran away and shipped aboard a privateer. After Benjamin had retrieved him Deborah waited for the meting out of some long-overdue punishment, but none had come. The boy had gone off to his bed without a word spoken; Benjamin and Deborah had gone off to their bed, and Benjamin still said nothing, until Deborah could no longer keep hold of it.

“What do you plan to do, give him another horse in reward for it?”

“It was mortifying for the lad, being hauled off the ship. He’s been through enough.”