The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series)

Copyright © L.B. Joramo

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For my son, Reid

19 April 1775

My sights aligned on two men, both on horseback, talking heatedly in the forest. Not even the bright afternoon sun could shine through the dense Massachusetts trees to where they were mounted. Dark shadows distorted their faces, making young and handsome into grotesque and macabre.

They were less than three feet from each other, and my rifle inched sideways from one man to the other. Their horses were drawn tight against each other, circling and tearing into the ground in a nervous dance, sensing the tension from their riders, from the moment, from the God-forsaken day. The riders’ irate tones were periodically interrupted by a far-off musket shot and, occasionally, a terrified scream.

Shrouded by an overgrown juniper bush, I was no more than thirty yards away from the arguing men. Tiny thorns imbedded themselves in my arms, legs, and stomach, tearing my skin, reddening my already filthy arms. I was numb to it all.

They were the last two people I loved on this damned earth, those two angry men: Mathew and Jacque. They were all I had to live for, those riders in my rifle’s sights.

Two months earlier in Concord, Massachusetts . . .

The scent of gunpowder filled my nostrils and the back of my mouth. I’d always thought gunpowder and the earth smelled alike, both heady and slightly sour. But gunpowder stung my nose with its odor, while dirt comforted me. Soil provided, while powder had a fate of its own.

Pulling back the dogshead to halfcocked on my long rifle, I placed a large pinch of gunpowder into the priming pan, then closed the frizzen. After dropping the butt of my Kentucky musket to the ground, I poured more powder from my horn into the barrel then dropped a round lead ball into the four-foot long gullet of my gun.

“My dear, are you sure you wouldn’t want some help loading that gigantic gun?” Mr. Randolph said, while glancing down my dress’ neckline. Ass.

“Randolph,” Mr. Clark said, “Adams assured us that the good woman can load her own weapon.” But Mr. Clark took the powder horn from my hands. Appearing to pour more down the barrel of my rifle, which would make it far more dangerous to myself than my target, my fiancé, Mathew Adams, snatched the horn away.

“Clark,” Mathew winked at me before turning his attention to Mr. Clark, “she seems set with the powder already.”

Not accustomed to so much gentlemanly help, I stood mute, likely looking like an idiot to all the world. Mayhap not the entire world, but what felt like it to me. Thirty yards away, my fellow Concordians were having a potluck upon the lush green Common that warm, early spring day. A couple tavern owners had lent the Common a few tables and chairs and ale, and we, the villagers, had brought the food – cranberry and honey cakes, varieties of meats, cheeses, dried fruit, Anadama bread with apple butter, and, my favorite, freshly picked blueberries.

Mathew had invited his two colleagues, Mr. Clark and Mr. Randolph, all Harvard-trained barristers and now young clerks for the Provincial Congress, who were so thoroughly engaged in assisting me with my long rifle.

“Are you sure, Adams?” Mr. Randolph leaned closer to me, peering down in the general vicinity of my rifle. I hoped. “Your delicate fiancée shouldn’t hold that heavy weapon by herself. If you aren’t going to help her aim, then I think I should.”

I lifted a brow at Mathew.

Mathew furrowed his dark blond eyebrows for a second, but then laughed. “Randolph, I have complete confidence in my Violet. In
you
, however, I have none.” He glanced at me again, an easy smile on his friendly face. In Mathew’s smile was warmth, comfort, and familiarity, like swinging on a rope over the river beside my family’s farm, something we had done ever since we were children.

Mr. Randolph chuckled and strode closer to Mathew and Mr. Clark. “I don’t blame you at all, Adams. She’s quite a beauty. I wouldn’t trust any man to be close to her either.”

Yes
, he said that within my earshot.
Yes
, he was talking about me as if I were an ornament. And,
yes
, it was infuriating, but what could I do about it? It wasn’t the first time a man had talked about a woman as if she were a trinket, nor would it be the last. Perhaps one day I could think of some retort, but for that day, I just grabbed my ramrod and jammed it into the barrel with a wee bit more force than was necessary.

Mathew wrinkled his eyebrows in silent apology for Mr. Randolph’s being a blockhead. Soon enough, however, the men were talking boastfully about last week’s news of the Salem militia’s resistance against the redcoats who had conducted an illegal search of arms and other military supplies. At least, that’s the way the band of lawyers surrounding me termed it.

“They held off those damned demons—oh, excuse me, Miss Buccluech—all day, I heard,” Mr. Clark said.

I snapped the ramrod back into the hooks on the belly of my rifle.

“No, no, not all day. Just a few hours really,” Mathew said. “Violet heard it from Salem’s blacksmith himself. It was only a couple hours, the standoff, and in the end, the lobsterbacks did march into Salem, some thirty rods or so, then marched right back to Boston without gaining one grain of powder, let alone any arms from those Salem boys.”

As I brought the gun to my shoulder, I pulled the dogshead all the way back—cocked and ready to be fired.

Standing firmly on the emerald grass of the Common, I took aim over the spirited Concord River at a piece of parchment nailed to a tree. It was a broadside declaring that any three or more colonial men meeting to discuss
anything
, even if it wasn’t traitorously speaking about King George
,
would be arrested on sight, fined and jailed for a month. Except, of course, we could all come together on Sabbath, today, to hail our King and God—preferably in that order, one assumed.

Mr. Randolph asked, “Do you think the Regulars will march to some other village for another seizure?”

I inhaled, aligning my sights. Pausing my exhale, I pulled the trigger. Immediately after the blast, white-blue clouds whooshed around me, making a few wild strands of my dark hair wave in front of my eyes. For a second I was peacefully alone in the sulfuric smoke. Shooting wasn’t my favorite activity, but in that ringing silence, away from all prying eyes, there was pleasure enough to make me smile as I let the butt of my rifle sink back to the ground.

The opaque smoke began to clear into a fine gray mist, though tendrils of the vapor clutched onto my white dress and about my head. Slowly the three men reappeared.

“Good Lord in heavens, are you all right, girl?” Mr. Clark exclaimed as Mr. Randolph grabbed the telescope from Mathew and stared over the swollen rushing river.

Mr. Randolph whistled. “
She got it
.”

“No!”  Mr. Clark shrieked.

“She
did
. She did, indeed.” Mr. Randolph began to chuckle as he turned to me. “There’s a brilliant hole in that paper now. That’s more than two-hundred yards away, you little angel. Look at you, complete with a halo of smoke.” He glanced back to Mathew. “Adams, you have swindled your dear friends, I believe.”

Mathew chuckled, walked the few paces closer to me then took my free hand in his. All the smoke disappeared with his movement.

“No,” Mr. Clark shook his head, then looked in the spy glass himself, followed by another suspicious glance at me. “No, it had to be chance. I didn’t even see her aim.”

“Well, sir, you weren’t paying attention.” Mathew beamed at me and held an arm around my shoulders. “I did tell you my fiancée had a hawk’s eye.”

“I thought you were jesting,” Mr. Clark choked. “I thought it was a horrid metaphor for how she viewed you as handsome or some such nonsense.” He nervously licked his fat lips and studied me like an insectologist would examine a rare West Indies beetle—intriguing, but still a bug.

I didn’t trust myself to say anything smart in reply. Lord, I detested how slow my brain stirred when in public. Sweetly shy, my mother tenderly referred it, but for me it was as if something in me froze when I was in a large group of people, even if most of the Concordians were many feet away.