Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  So was it drawn. Then ev’ryone waited for the Astronomers from London to come and verify the rude Colonials’ work.

  For ev’ry surveyor who forsook his hearthside in the Weeks of Chill when the crops were in, and the leaves were flown and sights were longer, to go out into the Brush and actually set up, out of pure Speculation, where there might be a few square inches of dry land, and try to turn the angles and obtain the star shots, getting in addition snake-bit, trapp’d in sucking Mud, lost in Fog, frozen to the Marrow, harass’d by farmers, and visited by Sheriffs,— for ev’ry such Field-Man there were dozens of enthusiastic amateurs, many of them members of the clergy, who from the comfort of their Fires sent the Commissioners an unceasing autumn-wind full of solutions,— which came in upon foolscap and Elephant and privately water-mark’d stock, fluttering in the doors, drifting into corners,— you’d have thought it was Fermat’s Last Theorem, instead of a County Line that look’d like a Finial upon something of Mr. Chippendale’s.

  “Yes well of course that’s a Question of taste, but,— look at the way it leans, just enough to be obvious,— honestly Cedric, it’s so predictably Colonial, as if,— ‘Oh they don’t even know how to find North over there, well we must send our Royal Astronomers to tidy things up mustn’t we,—’ sort of thing when in fact it’s once more the dead Hand of the second James, who went about granting all this Geometrickally impossible territory,— as unreal, in a Surveying way, as some of the other Fictions that govern’d that unhappy Monarch’s Life.”

  Or, “Once upon a time,” as the Revd re-tells it for Brae, “there was a magical land call’d ‘Pennsylvania.’ In settlement of a Debt, it was convey’d to William Penn by the Duke of York, who later became James the Second. And James had been granted the land by his brother Charles, who at the time was King.

  “To understand their Thinking, however, would require access to whatever corner of the Vatican Library houses the Heretick Section, and therein the concept, spoken of in hush’d tones, when at all, of Stupiditas Regia, or the Stupidity of Kings. And Queens, of course, O alarmèd Tenebræ, not to mention Princesses,— yes Stupidity even afflicts those, you would think perfect, Creatures as well.”

  “How so?” Tenebræ coolly carrying on with her acufloral Meditations. “There have I’m sure been non-stupid Princesses, indeed a good many, Uncle. Whereas Kings and Princes are so stupid, they pretend maps that can’t be drawn, and style them ‘Pennsylvania.’” Picking up a Fescue, she leans toward the Map upon the Wall, recourse to which over the years has settl’d no one knows how many such Disputes, “King Charles begins at a Meridian Line Somewhere out in the untravel’d Forests,— here, five degrees of Longitude West of Delaware Bay. Then this not very learnèd Brother finds the point where his desolate Meridian crosses the Fortieth Parallel of North Latitude. ’Tis of course in a huge blank space on the Map. Here. At the south-western and least accessible corner of the Grant,— where, at this remote intersection of Parallel and Meridian, is to be anchor’d the entire Scheme. Running eastward from there, the royal Brothers expect the Forty-Degree Line somewhere to encounter James’s Twelve-Mile Arc about New Castle,— ”

  “Oh, twelve miles ought to do it. We don’t want to say thirteen, because that’s so unlucky.”

  “Fourteen would engross for you Head of Elk,” Charles observes, “but ’twould push too far West, this vertical Line, here,— ”

  “The Tangent Line, Sir.”

  “I knew that.”

  “Charles and James,” the Revd sighing, “and their tangle of geometrick hopes,— that somehow the Arc, the Tangent, the Meridian, and the West Line should all come together at the same perfect Point,— where, in fact, all is Failure. The Arc fails to meet the Forty-Degree North Parallel. The Tangent fails to be part of any Meridian. The West Line fails to begin from the Tangent Point, being five miles north of it.”

  Indeed, a spirit of whimsy pervades the entire history of these Delaware Boundaries, as if in playful refusal to admit that America, in any way, may be serious. The Calvert agents keep coming up with one fanciful demand after another, either trying to delay and obstruct as long as possible the placing of the Markers, or else,— someone must suggest,— giddy with what they imagine Escape, into a Geometry more permissive than Euclid, here in this new World. During the negotiations, Marylanders suggest locating the exact center of New Castle by taking a sheet of paper showing a map of the Town, trimming ’round the edges till only the Town remains, and then shifting this about upon the point of a Pin, till it balances, and at that center of gravity pricking it through, as being the true center of the Town.

  Yet, if the Twelve-Mile Arc be taken as the geometrical expression of the Duke of York’s wish to preserve from encroachment his seat of Government, then must there project a literal Sphere of power from the Spire atop the State-House, whose intersection with the Earth is the Arc,— unalterably Circular, not to be adjusted by so much as a Link to agree with any Tangent Line.

  Oblig’d, for meetings with the Commissioners, to sleep in New Castle a Night or two, the Surveyors discover the Will of the second James at close hand. South, tho’ not far enough, lie the Bay, and the open Sea. Before subsiding to perhaps but a single deep hour of stillness broken by no more than the Voices of frogs and the stirring of the salt fens, the sounds dominating the fallen night are the Cries of Sailors behind the doors of Taverns, and the jingling and Drone of the Musick that pleases them. The hypnagogic Citizenry lie wond’ring if these sailors, some of whose Ships carry guns, would defend the Town, should some Catholick war-ship, or more than one, advance upon them, torches flaming black and greasy, Ejaculations in Languages unfathomable. . . .

  “Spanish privateers, and Frenchmen, too,” their Hosts are pleas’d to relate, “were us’d to come up the River, bold as Crows, to attack the little villages and Plantations. We never felt as secure at night as you in Philadelphia. Any seaborne assault upon that City would mean first the Reduction of New Castle, for ’tis the Key to the River. Now it is difficult to remember, but fifteen years ago in the era of Don Vicente López, there was an apprehensive Edge in this Town as soon as the Sun went down, that did not grow dull till dawn. Tho’ by day the busy Capital of the de facto Province of Delaware, with night-fall we became a huddl’d cluster of lights trembling into the coming Hours, from lanthorns, candles, and hearths, each an easy target upon the humid Shore. Many of us adopted forms of nocturnal Behavior more typical of New-York, staying up the Night thro’, less out of the Desire to transgress than the Fear of sleeping anytime other than in the Day-light hours.”

  The great Scepter atop the Court House continues in the dark to radiate its mysterious force. The stock are gone to sleep. The fish and the Wine were excellent. Rooms fill with tobacco Smoke,— insomnia and headaches abound. Cards emerge from Cherry-wood Recesses. Occupants of the Houses along the River stir among the lumps in their Mattresses, ready at any Alarm to wake. Their dreams are of Spanish Visitors who turn out to be unexpectedly jolly, with courtly ways, rolling eyes, passionate guitars, not a homicidal thought in the Boat-load of ’em. Ev’ryone ends up at an all-night Ridotto, with piles of mysterious delectable Mediterranean food, “Sandwiches” made of entire Loaves stuff’d with fried Sausages and green Peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, cheese melted ev’rywhere, fresh Melons mysteriously preserv’d thro’ the Voyage, wines whose grapes are descended from those that supplied Bacchus himself. New Castle dreams, drooling into and soaking Pillows, helpless before the rapacious, festive fleet.

  How swiftly might the Popish scourge descend,—

  Another Don Vicente, Havoc’s Friend,

  Another vile and ringletted Señor,

  Another Insult to our sov’reign Shore.

  — Timothy Tox, Pennsylvaniad

  Through July they continue North, thro’ swamps, snakes, godawful humidity, thunder-gusts at night, trees so thick that even with thirty axmen, each
chain’s length seems won with Labor incommensurate,— waking each glaucous Dawn into sweat and stillness, to struggle another Day, with no confidence that at the correct Distance, they will pass anywhere near the Tangent Point, much less touch it exactly.

  On paper, the Tangent Line’s inclination reminds Dixon of the road between Catterick and Binchester,— in fact, on up to Lanchester, though one had to look for it,— part of the Romans’ Great North Road. To amuse himself in his less mindful moments, he would travel out to the old Roman ruins above the Wear and sight southward down the middle of the road, for it ran straight ahead as a shot. Nothing so clear or easy as that in Delaware, however. Dixon mutters to himself all shift long. “If we set up over there, then this great bloody Tree’s in the way,— yet if we wish to be clear of the Tree for any sight longer than arm’s length, we must stand in Glaur of uncertain Depth,— looking withal from Light into Shadow. . . .”

  “I appreciate it,” says Mason, “when you share your innermost thought-processes with me in this way,— almost as if, strangely, you did trust me.”

  “After these Months? Who would?”

  In August they finally go chaining past the eighty-one-mile mark, which they figure puts them a little beyond the Tangent Point, wherever it is, back there. They take September, October, and November to find it, as nicely as Art may achieve, computing Offsets and measuring them, improving the Tangent Line by small Tweaks and Smoothings, until they can report at last that the ninety-degree Angle requir’d, between the Tangent Line and the twelve-Mile Radius from the Court House to the Tangent Point, is as perfect as they can get it,— which means, as it will prove, off by two feet and two inches, more or less.

  In December they discharge the Hands and pause for the Winter, at Harlands’, at Brandywine. “To a good year’s work.” Dixon raising a pewter Can of new Cider. “And pray for another.”

  “To Repetition and Routine, from here to the End of it,” Mason gesturing reluctantly with his Claret-Glass . . . even so, more festive than he’s been for a while.

  “Routine! Not likely! Not upon the West Line! Who knows what’ll be out there? Each day impossible to predict,— Eeh! pure Adventure . . . ?”

  “Thankee, Dixon, a Comfort as ever, yes the total Blindness in which we must enter that Desert, might easily have slipp’d my mind, allowing me a few pitiable seconds’ respite from Thoughts of it how welcome,— alas, ’twas not to be, was it, at least, nowhere in range of your Voice.”

  “Ehw deah . . . imagin’d I’d been taking rather the jolliest of Tones actually, my how awkward for you . . . ?”

  Another Holiday flare-up, of many preceding, which at first had sent Harlands of all ages cringing against the walls or scrambling up the Ladder, yet soon subsided to but one more sound of untam’d Nature to be grown us’d to out here, like Thunder, or certain Animal Mimickries at night, from across a Creek. Each time, the Surveyors apologize for their behavior,— then, presently, are screaming again. Apologize, scream, apologize, scream,— daily life in the Harland house grows jagged. After a Christmastide truce, with the rest of the winter waiting them, perhaps more of it than any can imagine themselves surviving without at least one serious lapse in behavior, the Surveyors decide to travel to Lancaster, perhaps in hopes that the imps of discord will fail to pursue them ’cross Susquehanna.

  34

  Lancaster Town lies thirty-five miles’ Journey to the West. “What brought me here,” Mason wrote in the Field-Record, “was my curiosity to see the place where was perpetrated last Winter the Horrid and inhuman murder of 26 Indians, Men, Women and Children, leaving none alive to tell.”

  “ ‘Me,’ notes Uncle Ives,” ‘my,’— sounds like Mason went by himself.”

  The Revd nods. “Dixon told me, that Mason had meant to go alone,— but that at the last moment, mindful of the dangers attending Solitude in a Town notorious for Atrocity, he offer’d to add Muscular Emphasis, tho’ Mason seem’d unsure of whether he wanted him there or not.”

  They— presume “they,”— reach Lancaster 10 January 1765, putting up at The Cross Keys. The Public Rooms are crowded with Lawyers, Town Officials, Justices, Merchants, and Mill-owners,— the middling to better sort, not a murderously drooling backwoodsman in sight,— unless they include their Guide, pick’d up about a minute and a half inside the Town Limits, who may once or twice have undergone a loss of salivary control,— Mason soon enough on about how quaint, how American, Dixon rather suspecting him of being in the pay of the Paxton Boys, to keep an eye upon two Hirelings of their Landlord and Enemy, Mr. Penn.

  “Here for a look at the Massacre Site, are you, Gentlemen? I can always tell. Some bring Sketching-Books, some Easels, others their Specimen-Bags, but all converge thro’ the same queer Magnetism. I quite understand, tho’ others about may not,— ’twould do to mind one’s belongings,— yet I must not bite the Backs that ignore me. . . . The first stop upon any Tour is acknowledg’d to be The Dutch Rifle, whither the Boys, hush’d be the Name ever spoken, having left their Horses at Mr. Slough’s, repair’d just before the Doing of the Deed. Step this way, pray yese.”

  When they see what is upon the Tavern Sign, Mason and Dixon exchange a Look,— the Weapon depicted, Black upon White, is notable for the Device upon its Stock, a Silver Star of five Points, revers’d so that two point up and one down,— a sure sign of evil at work, universally recogniz’d as the Horns of the D——l. No-one would adorn a Firearm with it, who was not wittingly in the service of that Prince. This is not the first Time the Surveyors have seen it,— at the Cape, usually right-side-up, it is known as the Sterloop,— a sort of good-luck charm, out in the Bush. But ev’ry now and then, mostly on days of treacherous Wind or Ill-Spirits, one or both had spied upon a Rifle an inverted Star, much like what they observe now, against the Sky, plumb in the windless Forenoon.

  “I told ye the last time, that last time was the last time, Jabez,” comes a Voice from a high Angle,— Mason, and Dixon, peering upward, observe the Landlord, whose Pate appears to brush the beams above him, in a vex’d Temper.

  “Ever a merry Quip,” cries Jabez, nimbly stepping behind the Surveyors and propelling them in ahead.

  They are examin’d skeptickally. “Not from the Press, are you?”

  “ ’Pon my Word,” cry both Surveyors at once.

  “Drummers of some kind’s my guess,” puts in a Countryman, his Rifle at his Side, “am I right, Gents?”

  “What’ll we say?” mutters Mason urgently to Dixon.

  “Oh, do allow me,” says Dixon to Mason. Adverting to the Room, “Why aye, Right as a Right Angle, we’re out here to ruffle up some business with any who may be in need of Surveying, London-Style,— Astronomickally precise, optickally up-to-the-Minute, surprisingly cheap. The Behavior of the Stars is the most perfect Motion there is, and we know how to read it all, just as you’d read a Clock-Face. We have Lenses that never lie, and Micrometers fine enough to subtend the Width of a Hair upon a Martian’s Eye-ball. This looks like a bustling Town, plenty of activity in the Land-Trades, where think yese’d be a good place to start?” with an amiability that Mason recognizes as peculiarly Quaker,— Friendly Business.

  “Then why are yese askin’ Jabez ’bout th’ Massacree?” inquires a toothless old Coot with an empty Can, which Dixon makes sure is promptly fill’d.

  “Aye! How do we know ye’re not just two more Philadelphia Fops, out skipping thro’ the Brush-wood?”

  “He approach’d us,” Mason protests.

  “We’re men of Science,” Dixon explains, “— this being a neoclas-sickal Instance of the Catastrophick Resolution of Inter-Populational Cross-Purposes, of course we’re curious to see where it all happen’d.— ”

  “You can’t just come minuetting in from London and expect to understand what’s going on here,” advises Mr. Slough.

  “This is about Family, sure as the History of
England. Inside any one Tribe of Indians, they’re all related, see? Kill you one Delaware, you affront the Family at large. Out here, if it’s Blood of mine, of course I must go out and seek redress,— tho’ I’ll have far less company.”

  “Each alone lacking the Numbers, our sole Recourse is to band together.”

  “These were said to be harmless, helpless people,” Dixon points out in some miraculous way that does not draw challenge or insult in return. Apprehensive among these Folk, Mason, who would have perhaps us’d one Adjective fewer, regards his Geordie Partner with a strange Gaze, bordering upon Respect.

  “They were blood relations of men who slew blood relations of ours,” Jabez explains.

  “Then if You know who did it, for the Lord’s sake why did You not go after them?”

  “This hurt them more,” smiles a certain Oily Leon, fingering his Frizzen and Flint.

  “Aye, they go on living, but without dear old Grandam,— puts a big Hole in the Blanket, don’t it?”

  “You must hate them exceedingly,” Mason pretending to a philosophickal interest actually far more faint than his interest in getting out of here alive.

  “No,” looking about as if puzzl’d, “not any more. That Debt is paid. I’ll live in peace with them,— happy to.”

  “Mayn’t they now feel oblig’d to come after you?” asks Jere Disingenuous. He notices Mason just visibly creeping toward the Door.