Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation (3 page)

And then, just the way it had been before—different parts of the country began scrapping like cats and dogs. It was enough to make a body sick, the way folks forgot the things they had fought for a long time back. And the
Constitution
didn't get about to keep spreading the spirit of liberty; it just stayed tied up to a dock in Boston, gathering green weeds and barnacles all over its bottom.

Finally, it came to a pass where just about nobody had any of the spirit of liberty left in him. Things had gone from bad to worse, and the government at Washington said to itself, “Here's an old frigate called the
Constitution
rotting away in Boston Harbor, with us paying out money for a man to watch it. It's a nuisance and an eyesore and it gets in the way of things. Why don't we break it up and sell it for old fire wood?”

You can see what a pass things had come to when they decided to go ahead and get rid of the
Constitution
. Instead of the people standing up and raising their voices against it, they just nodded their heads and agreed that it was an economical thing to do.

And it might have been done, except for the poet. This poet was a very wise man, and he had heard about the spirit of liberty, and he set out to find it. Of course, he didn't know about the
Constitution
, because folks forgot that the spirit of liberty had ever resided in that old, rotten hulk, but he did know that at one time the spirit of liberty had blown like a fresh wind through the land, and that now it was gone. He made up his mind that if he found the spirit of liberty he would put it into a song, and that the song would be on everyone's lips.

He set off to search for it, and he had a mighty hard time. He went around asking folks if they had heard about the spirit of liberty, and people looked at him as if he was crazy. They explained to him very carefully that a man had enough to do making a living and putting away a little for the future without bothering about the spirit of liberty. Those were good Yankee qualities, they explained to him. When he insisted that the spirit of liberty was a Yankee quality too, they turned around and stared and said they were a lot too busy to bother with the likes of him.

Well, he became so downright discouraged that he decided to give it all up. He turned around to go home, and when he got home, he read in the papers how they were going to break up the
Constitution
and sell her for old wood because no one cared for her any more.

He said to himself, “I reckon I'll see the old boat before she goes down. Like enough, there soon won't be anything of the old times left.” And with that he took himself off right away to Boston Harbor.

Now when he came to the
Constitution
, even the watchman had gone. The government figured there was no use keeping a watchman on a lot of old pine boards that were soon to be sold for fire wood. The poet came on deck and stood there, and from somewhere he heard a sound that was like the voices of men singing. He followed the sound—into the dark hold, right down to the keel. He stood there, bending his head to listen, and when he had listened a while, he knew more than he had known before.

He heard a song, and when he left the
Constitution
, his head was full of that song. He wrote it down, and it began this way, “Ay, tear her tattered ensign down—” He sent that song to a newspaper, and the newspaper published it, and everyone who read it breathed in the spirit of liberty, which the poet had put into a song.

Before you knew it, there was an army of folks up and down the land telling the government that they wouldn't stand to have the old frigate broken up for firewood. And after the government people had breathed in some of the spirit of liberty, they were glad to leave the old vessel alone.

So there she stands to this day—same pine boards, same keel timbers, same old canvas. And all day long, people go in and out of her, and when they come away, they take some of the glowing, living spirit of liberty with them.

2

Rachel

 

RACHEL

P
A SAT
on a stump with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, for the Lord only knows how long. Just like that, without moving and without eating. I cooked a piece of meat for dinner and offered him some, but he shook his head, and when I cooked a piece of meat for supper, he did the same. He just wouldn't eat and wouldn't move and wouldn't talk. So I went to sleep, and when I got up in the morning he was still sitting there.

I said, “Pa, how long you going to carry on this way?”

Then he looked over to the edge of his cleared land where there was some fresh dirt and a cross, and then he looked at me as if he had seen me for the first time in maybe six months.

I told him, “Pa, it's two days since Ma died, and you ain't moved from that stump. Sure, you'll starve to death.”

Then he grinned a little and got down off the stump.

“Get out the skillet, Dave,” he said. “We'll fry up some smoky.”

So we sat inside the cabin with the pan of smoky between us, eating and looking at each other. I could see that Pa wanted to talk to me, but figured I was too young to be talked to. Instead, he smoked his pipe after he had finished eating. Then he got down Ma's old Bible, opened it, and set himself for writing with a piece of charcoal stick.

On the front inside cover of the Bible, which was the only book we had in the house, there were a lot of dates and places and names. Pa held the book a long way off, squinting at the writing. He was all right when it came to slow reading of block print, but not so good with writing.

“Births and deaths,” he said slowly. “Back East, when kin passes, all the kinfolk gather for funeral doings. You wouldn't know, Davey, but it makes the heart easy. Here—well, here there ain't nothing but this Bible.”

“It's a mighty pretty good book,” I said.

“Sure it is, Davey, sure. But it ain't like kinfolk. A man can't rightly live and be human without kinfolk. How old are you, Davey?”

I figured awhile and then said, “Ten years, two months and maybe a for'night.”

Pa figured and summed on his hands. “You were born third day of March, 1778, Davey. So this is the seventeenth day of May, 1788.”

I nodded.

Pa fiddled for a while with the charcoal stick, then gave it to me. “You write it in, careful like, Davey.”

I wrote out, “Susan Harvey died on the fifteen day of May, year of our Lord, 1788, of fever.”

“Age twenty-nine,” Pa said, his voice kind of hoarse. When I put that in, Pa read what I had written. “Put in Northwest Territory, Davey.” Then he closed the Bible and put it back on its shelf.

He went outside, and I was afraid that maybe he had gone back to sitting on the stump with his face in his hands. But when I came out, he was harnessing the horse for plowing.

It was a week later when Pa made up his mind to go into the stockade. The stockade was called Murry's Fort, and it was the nearest place where there were folks and a store to buy and sell. It was thirty miles odd if you used the ford, and nearer forty if you took the ferry, and it was a mighty big place, with eighty-seven people living inside the walls and in the neighborhood. Mostly, I was shy of so many folks, but it was a wonder to see what they had to sell in that store.

Pa said that morning, “Dave, a boy like you can't run wild like a critter.”

“Why not?” I demanded.

“Well, it ain't right. We ain't woodsy folk; we're proper farmers, and a man goes bad if he can't have bread with his meals and a stitched garment for his back. Your Ma had reading and writing, and I got a little, and it ain't proper you should go wild.”

“I'm going to be a hunter,” I said. “Just as soon as I can tote a rifle, I'm going off to hunt and trade with the Indians.”

With that, Pa fetched me a smack across the head, the first since Ma had died.

“Davey, don't say that again,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“You'll learn why. Maybe out here's the deep wilderness where you forget the word of God, but I ain't forgot. Menfolk in our family and in your ma's were farmers and smiths and maybe a doctor or a law man. But not no-account.” And with that he went to saddling up the horse.

“We're going in to the stockade,” he said.

“Why?”

“To get me a wife and you a ma.”

“I won't have no other ma!” I yelled. “I'll be damned if I will!”

“Dave,” he said quietly, “you put on your shoes and shut your mouth. You swear again and I'll tan your hide right off you. See if I don't.”

I could tell that something came over Pa. He didn't seem easy, all the way in to the stockade. He kept muttering to himself, and he rode stiff in his black Sunday britches. We rode together, me behind him and holding onto his waist, and he held his gun away from his white Sunday shirt, so that he shouldn't dirty it.

The stockade sits across the river on a little hill; if you use the ford in dry season, the water runs under the horse's belly. The stockade isn't much for looks or size, and most folks live outside.

Pa and me, we forded the river with the low evening sun at our backs, with the water running like fat oil. We came up on out and Pa switched north, and for a moment I was glad, thinking maybe he had changed his mind. But he stopped in front of Parson Jackson's house, dismounted and lifted me down. The parson came around the house from the back, where he had been washing his face and hands in a bucket of water. The parson's wife poked her head out of the door, and the parson's four kids held back and stared at our horse. The parson's kids were townfolks, not woodsy but soft and small, and I didn't pay much attention to them.

“Good evening, Brother Harvey,” the parson said.… “'Evening, David.… It's a long time since you came in out of the woods.”

“A long time,” Pa agreed. “A man gets wanting for the sight of folks.”

“Sometimes when preaching, Brother Harvey, I feel that my flock is scattered beyond call. With you out in the deep woods, with the Grants forty mile down the river, with the Sutters north in the wilderness—well, a man's voice carries just so far.”

“I know,” Pa said.

“And Mrs. Harvey?”

Then I began to whimper; what with riding the great distance to the stockade, with this and that, I had almost forgotten. I had hoped that Pa would forget too.

“Stop that, Davey,” Pa said. Then he told the parson what had happened.

The parson's wife came out to listen and click with her tongue. The parson folded his hands and looked grave and sympathetic.

“And that's how it was,” Pa said.

“The will of the Lord,” the parson nodded.

“First I thought I would go crazy,” Pa said. “Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't think. Wanted to take my gun and go off into the deep woods. A man in the deep woods goes like an animal, and it's easy forgetting. Then I told myself, ‘You got to raise up the boy, like she wanted. Raise him up proper, with Bible reading and writing.' But a man can't be alone with thirty acres cleared, a hundred more to clear, crops going in and meat to be hunted, and expect to raise a boy proper.”

“What you need is a wife,” Mrs. Jackson said.

“Ah,” the parson nodded.

“I been fighting it,” Pa said.

The parson nodded and looked thoughtful. The parson's wife looked even more thoughtful.

I said, “Damn it, no! We can get along, Pa and me!”

“Shut up, Dave!” Pa snapped.

So I went off toward the river, crying awhile in the grass with my face in my hands and hating Pa. Then I felt better and went back. They were in the house now, drinking tea; it wasn't much better than our house, just one room, with a loft for the kids, squared logs and paper in the windows.

Pa was saying, “I don't know. It ain't fitting a man with thirty acres clear should marry a bondwoman.”