Hagmann slumped onto the bed, speechless. He mopped his face, which had gone very gray. He had finally been bested—by a thirteen-year-old, no less—and he knew it.
Angey dialed 911. He told the operator he’d like to report a murder.
“At least let me see it,” Hagmann whispered to Tony. “Just once.”
Tony stood. He opened the chest. There was nothing like a silver bell inside. Instead, he pulled out a rotting hangman’s noose. “I guess this belongs to you,” he said. “And I think you just used it on yourself.”
ony jumped out of bed as soon as he heard the alarm. It was the morning of his first day of eighth grade at Boston Latin. He pulled on a new pair of jeans—two sizes smaller than the ones he had worn when he’d arrived at Hangmen Court, thank you very much—and his favorite Red Sox jersey. He checked himself out in the mirror. All in all, it had been a pretty good summer.
Just as Michael had predicted, the letter from Revere to Tobias was more than enough to get 13 Hangmen Court off Health & Safety’s demolition list. As soon as Tony “found” the treasure chest in the attic’s secret room, No. 13 easily qualified as an exciting new site for the Freedom Trail, since Revere’s handbell proved it was an important part of his Midnight Ride, and the VOC casks proved it was the Sons of Liberty’s hiding place for smuggling tea prior to the Tea Party. As an added bonus, No. 13 also qualified for the Black Heritage Trail, seeing how the secret room itself was a heretofore unknown station of the Underground Railroad. Plus when Michael sold the letter to the Revere House, he got a good enough price for Eddie Wong to make all the emergency repairs necessary to allow the DiMarcos to remain safely in the house until a full restoration could begin the following summer—to be funded by the Boston Historical Preservation Society.
The DiMarcos would, of course, have to move temporarily when construction got under way. But that would only be next door, to No. 15. As it turned out, Benedict Hagmann hadn’t been as well off as he had pretended—he hadn’t been paying his back taxes for years—and he had desperately needed that bell to get himself out of some serious debt. (So basically, if he had written Tony a big fat check for the place, it would have bounced.) Anyway, the City of Boston had confiscated Hagmann’s home, and it now served as temporary housing for any families evicted by the Health & Safety Department. Much more comfortable than a motel room at Revere Beach.
Benedict Hagmann certainly wouldn’t be needing No. 15 any time soon. He had been charged with the murder of Angelo DiMarco and was now sitting in Walpole Prison awaiting trial. Rumor had it that Hagmann’s lawyer planned to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
As for Michael’s dissertation, he was in final revisions now—thanks again to that letter. A major New York publisher had offered to turn the whole thing into a book you could actually buy and read. Not only that, but Harvard had offered him a teaching job in January, when one of their history professors was to retire.
Meantime, Michael had attended a bunch of Red Sox games with Tony and Angey over the summer. (Tony had worn Ted Williams’s cap to every game, for luck. In the end, he had never bothered to get it appraised; he knew for a fact it belonged to Williams. And anyway, it wasn’t for sale.) Mikey hadn’t joined them much on their excursions to Fenway Park. He continued to be a die-hard Tigers fan. Actually, Mikey had pretty much given Angey the cold shoulder after all that had happened. It had bummed Angey out at first, but then he just started hanging out with Tony and Sarah. As luck would have it, Sarah was starting tenth grade at Boston Latin this fall. The three of them focused instead on perfecting their throwing arms at Christopher Columbus Park so they could all try out for JV baseball in the spring.
Which meant Tony had spent a lot less time online in virtual reality, and a lot more time in, well, reality. And the pounds kept melting away.
Speaking of the Pickleses—
Mildred was overjoyed when Tony jangled into Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe and set the cloth star on the spiral of the slate countertop for her inspection. Needless to say, it was a perfect match to all twelve of the others on the Stars and Stripes hanging overhead—thereby proving, at least to them, that the first American flag’s quincuncial design was neither a Hopkinson nor a Ross, but a Pickles. Mildred had seen no need to prove this fact to anyone else. The flag was still not for sale. There was a big difference, she had said, between an artifact and a keepsake, though both could be curiosities.
And finally, the fate of Revere’s silver handbell. Since Tony hadn’t really needed to sell it to help his parents pay for the renovations (and since he had the front door knocker, also forged by Revere, as a secret backup), he had decided to donate it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. As America’s first and original liberty bell, it now sat in good company alongside other treasures such as Old Glory, Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, Abraham Lincoln’s top hat, Lewis and Clark’s compass, and Thomas Edison’s lightbulb.
“Tony, get a move on!”
Angey, calling up from the third-floor landing.
Tony glanced over at the slate fireplace. He had never put the paneling back up. He liked having access to the secret room, now that the tea barrels had been donated to the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. He wandered over to the pawcorance and placed his hand on the spiral. He wondered what Angelo and Solly and Finn and Jack and Tobias were up to right now. Though he loved having his own room, he had kind of gotten used to sharing it with five other thirteen-year-olds for a while.
The distant echo of other voices from other times in Boston history, beyond Revere and the Revolution, reverberated in Tony’s head. He listened intently. What were they trying to say? Sounded like the word noose.
Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away. If he didn’t hoof it down to the kitchen, he wouldn’t have time to wolf his breakfast yogurt, granola, and juice. He would just have to ignore the voices and leave that hangman noose hidden in Paddy’s secret compartment beneath the bed. Right now, he had the rest of ordinary old 2009 to get on with. Then again, who could say who he might cross paths with today, or how he might unwittingly change the course of history just by being himself?
I can’t think about that right now.
Tony didn’t want to be late for his first day.
Story: As a fiction writer, I love the idea that story is being made out of history all the time—every single day of every month of every year—in spite of the fact that you may only remember a handful of dates like 1776 and 1812 and 1945. That’s kind of why I set Tony’s extraordinary tale in 2009—what might be considered one of the more ordinary off years in recent U.S. history. I specifically chose years ending in 9 because, frankly, I just like the nine-ishness of that number.
History: Mid-July of 2009 was, in fact, fairly quiet in Boston. America was in full economic recession, and the unemployment rate was at 9.5 percent with a loss of 467,000 jobs. President Barack Obama was valiantly trying to end two unpopular wars on terrorism—one in Iraq, another in Afghanistan—and not making much progress with either. Apart from that, there were a couple of noteworthy world events taking place while Tony was busy conjuring thirteen-year-olds: The big news was probably the funeral of legendary pop singer Michael Jackson, who died of an overdose in late June. Alaska’s governor Sarah Palin (the unsuccessful vice presidential candidate for the Republicans in 2008) announced her resignation, shocking most Americans with the declaration she was leaving presidential politics for good. (We’ll see.) India repealed its ban against homosexuality, declaring antigay laws to be a violation of human rights. Oh yeah, and the Red Sox swept a four-game series against the Royals at Fenway, though they ultimately ended the season eight games behind the Yankees.
13 HANGMEN COURT
Story: I wouldn’t bother looking for a cul-de-sac with that name in the North End. I thought long and hard about whether I would want a bunch of people knocking at my door asking to see Tony’s pawcorance in the attic. I immediately made up a fake address. Just as fake, actually, as the names Hagmann and H
angman. Neither family (nor the Pickleses, for that matter) figures prominently in Boston history for thirteen generations.
History: You might, however, notice the resemblance of Hangmen Court to Henchman Street, which does exist. That was named after Captain Daniel Henchman, who came to Boston as an indentured servant in 1666. However colorful his name, Daniel seems to have been a fairly upstanding—and busy—citizen before he moved to Worcester: militia captain, banker, lawyer, farmer, and brewer. But what if he really had been some sort of henchman? Or better yet, Boston’s original hangman? See how stories are hatched?
TED WILLIAMS
Story: This legendary left fielder for the Boston Red Sox never walked out of that series with the Tigers during his rookie season—which actually took place in Detroit, not Boston, in May of 1939. Nor would his doing so have ruined the career of number 27, Solomon Weinberg, because I made Solly up. In 1939, the Red Sox uniform numbers stopped at 26. (Note, however, that when you add 2 + 7, you get a 9….)
History: Ted Williams was of Latino descent on his mother’s side, though he wasn’t ever allowed to talk about it to the press. Williams didn’t get along at all with team manager Joe Cronin, who was by all accounts an unabashed racist. Cronin, who later became the general manager of the Red Sox, never traded for a single black player, and he refused to sign the young Willie Mays. But here’s something for the weird-but-true category: Williams was, in fact, cryogenically frozen when he died, to allow for the possibility of being brought back to life by future relatives. So I personally think he would have liked making a guest appearance in this book.
PAWCORANCES
Story: The spiral carved into Tony’s pawcorance comes straight out of my imagination, though it is based on a number of spiral pictographs and petroglyphs found in ancient Native American ruins throughout North America. Working with modern tribes, anthropologists have guessed their meaning to be the universe, a portal to the spirit world, or the coiled nature of time—and many others. And I’ve totally made up the link between spirals, pawcorances, and vision quests.
History: A word or three about pawcorances themselves: These mysterious stone markers have been found the entire length of the eastern seaboard. Their original purpose remains a mystery. It was actually Captain John Smith, settler of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, not Myles Standish, settler of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who described pawcorances in his memoirs. (I pulled a quick switcheroo because I thought the information coming from a Massachusettsian made my story spin a little tighter….) Smith asserted pawcorances were indeed stone markers and altars identifying places where the Algonquians had encountered spirits. According to Smith: “As you travel past them, they [local tribesmen] will tell you the cause of their erection, wherein they instruct their children.” Algonquian tribes gave the pawcorances of New England their name. Some sources claim that pawcorance was also the word for a small bird—of unidentified species—sacred to the Algonquians. It was believed to be inhabited by ancestral spirits, since it only ever appeared at dusk and dawn to sing. I’ve made the pawcorance a mockingbird for this story; I like the fact that mockingbirds mimic the languages of many other animals. Speaking of Myles Standish—he was, in fact, invited to a welcome feast of boiled lobsters and roast cod by the Massachuset sachem Obbatinewat. I have no idea if they discussed pawcorances, since Standish didn’t actually write a memoir titled Of My Amazing Exploites in the New Worlde.
VISION QUESTS
Story: The vision quest rituals I attribute to the Massachuset tribe—though based on a number of Algonquian traditions—are also made up. This is partly to protect Native American privacy. Many tribes prefer to reserve their cultural and religious practices for members of their own community. The Massachu-sets would certainly not link spirit encounters with the notion of time anomalies, as Hermann Minkowski (a real person) did in 1909 with his block universe theory (his honest-to-God hypothesis). It is true, though, that there was no word for time in Algonquian until the arrival of Europeans in North America.
History: Vision quests aren’t, by the way, solely a North American practice. The ritual can actually be found in nearly every ancient culture on the planet. If you’re interested in learning more about Native American practices, Google “Grandfather Stalking Wolf.” He was an Apache elder who traveled North and South America, distilling a wide range of rituals and philosophies—including the vision quest—to their most common roots.
THE GREAT MOLASSES FLOOD OF 1919
Story: No one by the name of Finn McGinley ever rented that derelict tank in the Purity Distilling Company’s yard (a real molasses factory) or planned to make rum with what was stored in it. I based that part of Finn’s tale on persistent rumors that Purity itself was trying to get rid of all evidence of rum making prior to the official effective date of Prohibition in 1920. What Purity officially made was industrial alcohol, which was then used in the production of munitions.
History: The Great Molasses Flood itself sounds like a fake event, I agree, but it’s totally true. It killed 21 and injured 150. It took volunteers 87,000 hours to clean some 2,300,000 gallons of molasses off cobblestone streets, buildings, and automobiles. Boston Harbor was said to have run brown until summer. Local residents brought a class-action suit against Purity Distilling for the disaster. Purity tried to claim the tank was blown up by anarchists protesting the outcome of World War I. But it did ultimately pay over $6 million (by today’s standards) in out-of-court settlements.
MAYOR JOHN F. “HONEY” FITZGERALD
Story: Honey-Fitz’s spectacular arrest of Stevie Wallace at the Charter Street Bank never took place. (I bet, though, that Honey-Fitz would have loved the tale—especially the part about them blowing open the safe as a Christmas gift to the poor Irish in the neighborhood.) A well-known champion of multiculturalism many decades before such a word was envisioned, Honey-Fitz did love the North End, where he grew up. He considered all its inhabitants, regardless of their race, color, or creed, as his “dearos.” Here’s a story that might actually be true: When Honey-Fitz finally convinced President Cleveland to veto an anti-immigration bill, his archenemy in Congress, Henry Cabot Lodge, was said to have shouted, “Impudent young man, do you think Jews or Italians have any right in this country?” and Honey-Fitz was said to have replied, “As much as your father or mine. It’s only a difference of a few ships.” It’s pure fiction, though, that Honey-Fitz (or his Red Sox fan club, the Royal Rooters) headquartered in a North End bar. Honey-Fitz was, as Jack points out, a teetotaler.
History: Honey-Fitz did indeed get reelected mayor in 1909 on a platform of reform. His gift of gab (known as Fitzblarney), and the fact that he sang “Sweet Adeline” at every campaign rally, certainly helped him to win—though no one knows who actually came up with that idea. Honey-Fitz did bring Irish mobsters Stevie and Frank Wallace under control with a few minor arrests. But it didn’t put an end to their shenanigans. It just prompted them to change their mob’s name from the Tailboard Thieves to the Gustin Gang and become Boston’s premier bootleggers. (Others claim that that title went to John F. Kennedy’s other grandfather, Joseph Kennedy.)
FREDERICK DOUGLASS and
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
Story: Though many threats were made against William Lloyd Garrison’s life over his long and controversial career as an abolitionist, the assassination attempt at Boston’s African Meeting House is pure fiction, as is his collection of $1,000 to buy the freedom of a one-eyed runaway slave named Jack.
History: In 1839, Frederick Douglass did hear Garrison orate in Boston about the abolishment of slavery for the first time, causing Douglass to state: “No face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments as did those of William Lloyd Garrison.” In 1841, Douglass went to hear Garrison again in Bristol and was unexpectedly asked to speak. Impressed, Garrison sang Douglass’s praise in The Liberator, which more or less launched Douglass’s career.
PAUL REVERE
Story: Paul Revere never rang a ha
ndbell to rouse Minutemen to arms. Nor did he forge such a bell for royal governor Thomas Hutchinson—though he did indeed own a bell and cannon works. (I admit it: I also made up the part about Revere learning how to make unopenable locks by copying North End pirate designs.) I actually got the idea for the handbell from a couple of inaccurate illustrations of Revere’s fabled Midnight Ride. Utterly missing from my story is the fact that Paul Revere Junior—a fine silversmith in his own right—held the shop together while Paul Revere, an excellent rider, delivered messages up and down the eastern seaboard for the Sons of Liberty.
History: Revere didn’t really become famous for his role in the American Revolution until 1860, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a poem about the Midnight Ride in the Boston Transcript. There can be no doubt of Revere’s patriotic commitment to American independence. He created one of the first (and most famous) engravings of the Boston Massacre. He was indeed one of the Mohawks shouting “No taxation without representation!” at the Boston Tea Party. He even wrote his own detailed account of his Midnight Ride—which you can actually read online just like I did. (In it, in fact, you’ll hear about the exploits of a Tory traitor and spy named Benjamin Church who served as inspiration for my totally fictitious characters Ian and Benedict Hagmann.) That Revere requested his own court-martial to clear his name of any wrongdoing in the Penobscot Expedition is a fact. What caused the Continental Army Command to dismiss the case before it ever came to trial is less clear, since military tribunal proceedings were, for the most part, oral and not well documented.
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