American Challenge

by Susan Martins Miller

  “Lydia!” Stephen protested as loudly as he dared. “Leave Anna alone. She has nothing to do with this argument. It’s between William and Uncle Cuyler.”

  Anna looked at him with grateful eyes. Stephen and Anna understood each other. In many ways, he was closer to Anna than he was to his own sisters. They were the same age, and they got along well, no matter what they were doing. He could not remember ever having an argument with Anna.

  “You’re just defending her because you agree with Uncle Cuyler!” Lydia snapped. “You should try paying attention to your own brother once in a while. Then you might understand politics a little better.”

  “I understand politics as well as you do.”

  “If you understood politics, you would know William is right.”

  “Stop it, Lydia,” Anna warned.

  Lydia folded her arms across her chest and stared spitefully at her little brother. “You were there last night in front of the Customs House, and you couldn’t even figure out what was going on.”

  “I was worried about Aunt Dancy. I was trying to find help!”

  “Ha! You cannot tell a Loyalist from a Patriot from a Lobsterback!”

  “Lydia Lankford, you take that back!” Without realizing it, Stephen had raised his voice. Stephen had had a long night and not enough sleep. Not more than an hour ago, William had commented on his patience with Lydia. But his patience was wearing thin now. His brown eyes narrowed as he glared at his sister.

  “What’s going on over there?” Papa took a step toward his two youngest children.

  Lydia and Stephen continued to glare at each other.

  “I’ll not have all this bickering in my shop,” Papa declared. “First it is Uncle Cuyler and William, and then Lydia and Stephen. This is a print shop. I am a businessman, not an assemblyman. I have a story to write for today’s edition of the newspaper. I have several sources to draw on—all of them reliable—and I will write the story as fairly as possible.”

  No one spoke for a moment.

  “Richard, I am very sorry for my behavior,” Uncle Cuyler said contritely. “I should have exercised more self-control.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Papa,” Will muttered. Papa’s eyes flashed at the children.

  Stephen swallowed the lump in his throat. “Please forgive me, Papa. I did not mean to lose my temper.”

  All eyes turned on Lydia. She huffed haughtily and looked the other way.

  “Lydia,” warned Papa.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” she said reluctantly.

  “I think you owe Stephen an apology as well.”

  Lydia clamped her teeth together and grunted, “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you, all,” Papa said. “And from now on, keep your brawling in the streets, please.” He turned back to his desk. “William, we have work to do.”

  “Yes, Papa.” William reached for the leather apron he wore when he worked the press.

  “I’ll be on my way,” Uncle Cuyler said. “Patrick Carr is in my clinic. Abigail is tending him, but I promised I would be back soon.”

  “Patrick Carr!” Lydia burst out. “He was one of the men who was shot.”

  Stephen studied the concern in his uncle’s face. “Is he going to be all right, Uncle Cuyler?”

  Uncle Cuyler sighed and shook his head. “He was wounded very badly. Four men have already died. I hope that he will not be the fifth.”

  “Can I go with you, Uncle Cuyler?” Stephen asked.

  “To the clinic?”

  Stephen nodded.

  “Certainly. I can always use another assistant.”

  “I’m going to stay here and help William,” Lydia declared.

  Stephen looked at Anna and gave a weak smile. No doubt the clinic would be a more peaceful place to spend the day.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Patient

  Walking a few steps ahead of Uncle Cuyler and Anna, Stephen pushed open the clinic door and peeked in. Aunt Abigail moved around the clinic quietly and efficiently. As she straightened supplies and swept the floor, she often glanced at the patient lying on the cot in the center of the room. He lay still, his breathing fast and shallow.

  After Patrick Carr had been shot—while Uncle Cuyler was delivering his new niece—men had carried him to the clinic. Several doctors spent the rest of the night with him. Aunt Abigail often helped Uncle Cuyler in the clinic, but taking care of someone as ill as Patrick Carr made her nervous. Gently, she lifted the quilt to check his bandage and tucked the quilt around his neck again.

  Uncle Cuyler and Anna nudged Stephen from behind, and the threesome entered. Uncle Cuyler hung his coat on a hook and motioned that the children should sit on two three-legged wooden stools near the wall. Stephen was content to watch from that distance.

  He liked coming to the clinic to visit Uncle Cuyler even when Anna was not there. Uncle Cuyler often remarked that there was a great deal about the human body that doctors did not yet understand. Even so, Stephen was impressed with Uncle Cuyler’s knowledge. Occasionally he was allowed to hand his uncle a bandage or something to clean a wound. Today, though, he knew he would only watch from his stool. Before him was the evidence of last night’s horror.

  Stephen wished he could remember only the joyous birth cry of his new cousin. Instead, his memory of her birth would always be mingled with the scenes he had witnessed as he ran through the streets of Boston in the dark. And now this image of a man lying wounded and bleeding in a doctor’s office would haunt him. For a split second, he tried to imagine the four men who had fallen dead in King Street during the previous night’s chaos. But the image was too horrible, and he chased it away before the wolves could come.

  Stephen looked over at Anna and smiled slightly.

  “Mr. Carr looks very sick,” Stephen whispered. “I hope your papa can help him.”

  “If anyone can help him, my father can,” Anna answered confidently. She pushed her hood back and let her yellow curls frame her face. Stephen was glad to have Anna with him. She was so different from Lydia. When he was with Anna, he did not have to be careful about everything he said. She would never fling his words back in his face.

  Stephen watched as Aunt Abigail approached her husband.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Aunt Abigail said quietly. “The other doctor had to leave to see his own patients, and I believe there is little I can do to help Patrick Carr. You’re the doctor, not I.”

  Uncle Cuyler looked at his wife gratefully, tenderly. “You have done your best to keep him comfortable. That is a great deal.”

  Uncle Cuyler felt for Patrick Carr’s pulse and laid his hand against the pale forehead to judge the fever. He murmured something to Aunt Abigail, who nodded in response and opened a cabinet for a fresh bandage.

  While Uncle Cuyler changed the dressing on the wound, Stephen observed his uncle. The haggard lines of his face announced that he had not been to bed during the night for even a few hours. Uncle Cuyler had gone straight from Aunt Dancy’s house to the crisis of Patrick Carr. Mr. Carr would need constant attention, so the team of doctors who had cared for him during the night had set up a schedule to make sure a doctor was always available for him. It was Uncle Cuyler’s turn. Sleep would have to wait. Uncle Cuyler blinked back the fatigue from his eyes.

  Stephen leaned over and whispered to Anna, “Do you know Mr. Carr?”

  Anna nodded. “He came to see my father a few times. We would greet each other in the street.”

  “He looks like a nice man.”

  “He is. I’m sorry he got hurt.”

  “I’m sorry anyone got hurt,” Stephen said.

  They were silent again as they watched Uncle Cuyler and Aunt Abigail work.

  Finally, Aunt Abigail walked toward them, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “Anna, perhaps we should be going home. Stephen, you are welcome to come and spend the day if you’d like.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Abigail, but I think I’d like to stay here.”

  “Uncle
Cuyler will be working very hard. Mr. Carr is quite ill.”

  “That’s all right. I like to watch.”

  “Does your father know where you are?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right, then. Come, Anna, let’s go home and clean up. Then we’ll go see the new baby.”

  Stephen smiled at the thought of his new cousin. “She’s very beautiful.”

  “I can’t wait to see her,” Anna said, clearly excited.

  “I do hope they give her a name soon,” Aunt Abigail said, chuckling. “But so many times parents wait for months before they decide on a name.”

  They left, and Stephen was alone with his thoughts while Uncle Cuyler tended his patient. The clinic took up several rooms on the first floor of a building near the center of Boston. Stephen was sitting in the main room, where Uncle Cuyler kept his supplies and examined patients. The walls were lined with cupboards filled with bandages, bedding, alcohol, herbs, and other potions that Uncle Cuyler mixed up for his patients. Uncle Cuyler had once let Stephen watch a bloodletting procedure on a man with malaria. Stephen was not sure he understood how bloodletting would help cure the illness, but still he was fascinated by medicine.

  Behind the main room were two rooms. One was a small room where Uncle Cuyler kept a supply of wood for the fire he always kept burning, and the other room, more finely finished, was where he studied. Bookshelves lined the walls.

  Uncle Cuyler liked to read just about any kind of book: Shakespeare’s plays, the Bible, science textbooks. Of course, he especially enjoyed anything that had to do with medicine. He kept every medical book he had ever studied. It seemed like a lot of books to Stephen, but Uncle Cuyler insisted there could never be too many medical books.

  Recently he had begun loaning books to Stephen. Many of them were too difficult for Stephen to understand. But he wanted to learn, so he studied them for hours, reading each paragraph over and over until he began to understand it. The volumes that illustrated human anatomy interested him the most. Stephen often thought that he might like to learn to be a doctor someday. Uncle Cuyler could teach him everything he knew, and then they could work together.

  Uncle Cuyler sank down on the stool next to Stephen and sighed heavily. Stephen turned his eyes to his uncle’s face and studied it. Uncle Cuyler looked more worried than tired.

  “Will he be all right, Uncle Cuyler?” Stephen asked. His voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  “I don’t know for sure, but right now I would say that probably he will not recover.”

  “Oh, Uncle Cuyler, can’t you do anything else for him?”

  “The other doctors were with him all night. We have done everything we can. The wounds are extensive.”

  “I don’t want anyone else to die,” Stephen said mournfully.

  “I don’t either. But we are living in a time of madness, Stephen. I fear that many more people will lie in my clinic wounded by British muskets before this is all over.”

  “Lydia doesn’t think it’s madness. She think it’s exciting.”

  “Lydia has always been an excitable child.”

  “She doesn’t think she’s a child either.”

  Uncle Cuyler chuckled. “Twelve years old is such an in-between age. But I don’t think Lydia realizes the seriousness of what is happening in Boston—and all over the colonies. Perhaps if she were here and saw Patrick Carr herself, she would think differently.”

  Stephen shook his head. “Lydia would never come here to see Patrick Carr. She thinks William knows everything. Whatever he says, she thinks it’s right. Like last night. She wasn’t there. And even though you were there for part of the time, she believes everything William says and nothing you say.”

  “Don’t forget that you were there yourself for a few minutes.” Stephen hung his head. “Lydia says I’m good for nothing because I didn’t try to see what was happening. But I was worried about Aunt Dancy.”

  Uncle Cuyler put one arm around Stephen’s thin shoulders. “You did the right thing, Stephen. I know Lydia is older than you are and she likes to tell you what to do, but you have a mind of your own. And it’s a very fine mind, I think.” Stephen smiled shyly. “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  A moan from the cot drew Uncle Cuyler’s attention away from their conversation. He jumped off the stool and ran across the room as Patrick Carr began to thrash around on the cot.

  “Stephen!” Uncle Cuyler called. “Help me keep him still. He’ll tear open his wound.”

  Stephen knew what to do. He had done this before with his uncle. He placed his hands firmly on the shoulders of the patient and let all his weight bear down. Uncle Cuyler held Patrick Carr’s ankles, and in a few moments, the patient was quiet again. Uncle Cuyler pulled back the quilt to inspect the wound once more.

  “He’s bleeding again, Stephen. I’ll need fresh bandages—lots of them.”

  Without hesitation, Stephen went to the correct cupboard and pulled out a handful of bandages. He rushed back to the cot. Uncle Cuyler began trying to soak up the leaking blood.

  “He’s lost far too much blood,” Uncle Cuyler said somberly.

  “He looks hot,” Stephen observed.

  “His fever is raging again. We don’t seem to be able to stop it.”

  A lump rose in Stephen’s throat. Uncle Cuyler finally stopped the flow of blood and rebandaged the wound.

  “Uncle Cuyler, if he dies … will it be … murder?”

  “What do you think, Stephen?”

  “William would say it is, but you say it isn’t.”

  “And what do you think?” Uncle Cuyler repeated.

  Stephen backed away from the cot toward his stool. “I don’t know what to think. I know William wouldn’t lie to me, and neither would you.”

  Satisfied that his patient was calm for the time being, Uncle Cuyler sat next to Stephen again. “William and I often disagree. It has been that way for several years—ever since the Stamp Act. But I respect William.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, and you should, too.”

  “But if you don’t agree with him, how can you respect him?”

  “William is a man who thinks for himself. And that is what I respect. He does what he believes is right before God. He is a man of integrity.”

  “But what if what William thinks is right really is wrong?”

  Cuyler raised his eyes to the cot across the room and pondered the question. “No matter what any of us thinks, we all have to face that question. If a deadly deed is done in the name of patriotism or loyalty, is it noble? If a good deed is done out of fear, does it lack all virtue?”

  “I’m not sure I understand, Uncle Cuyler.”

  “I’m not sure I do either, Stephen. But this is my point: You can listen to me, you can listen to William, and you can even listen to Lydia. But in the end, you must find your own answers. And only God can give you the answers.”

  “But you and William both believe in God. You both go to church; you both pray. Why doesn’t God tell you the same thing?”

  Cuyler nodded. “That is one of the great mysteries of our time, Stephen. And I struggle with that question every day.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The Funeral

  The relentless March wind whipped through the crowd and chapped Stephen’s cheeks. His nose started to run. He sniffled and tried to ignore the slow drip. He clenched his fists and pulled them up into his coat sleeves to keep them from the cold, raw air. Stephen stood with his parents and his sisters on the side of King Street, watching but not participating in what was happening. Uncle Ethan, back from New York at last, was with them.

  Three days had passed since the shooting in King Street. William had hardly been home at all during those three days. Stephen went to bed in their room alone, and when he woke, William’s bed would be rumpled but empty.

  The streets had been strangely quiet, even during the hours when merchants usually did most of their business. Governor Hut
chinson, who had finally dispersed the crowd on the night of the shooting, stayed hidden from sight much of the time. Sam Adams, however, walked the streets with the Sons of Liberty.

  Stephen’s sister Kathleen had said that Samuel Adams looked like he had worn his clothes to bed every night for a week. His wig was never on straight, and he seemed to have trouble keeping a job. Often he did not know where his next meal was coming from. Still, he committed himself to the one cause he believed in: overthrowing British oppression. He wrote so many letters to the newspapers in Boston that Richard Lankford would groan aloud when he saw the handwriting that had become familiar to every editor in town.

  After the shootings, Sam Adams made no threats and gave no hints that he was planning any action that would stir up the people more. Yet Governor Hutchinson and the other British officials watched him carefully. Even when he seemed to be doing nothing, Sam Adams could make people think he was stirring up trouble. The Sons of Liberty could fly into action at a moment’s notice.

  Stephen felt Kathleen’s hand on his shoulder and looked up at her.

  “Are you warm enough?” she asked.

  Stephen shivered but nodded. He was as warm as anyone could expect to be, so he would not complain. He turned his back to the street and raised his arm to block the glare of the winter sun.

  Patrick Carr was still critically ill. Uncle Cuyler and the other doctors worked to keep him stable and comfortable, but he was worse every day. Stephen had visited the clinic every day during Uncle Cuyler’s shift to see for himself. Patrick’s face was gray, and his breathing heavy. Every day Stephen hoped for a turnaround. But every day Patrick Carr was closer to death.

  The four who had already died were to be buried today. All activity in Boston had shut down in the late afternoon. The schools remained closed. Merchants left their shops. Mothers bundled up their children against the March temperatures. Even the Lankfords had come out to watch respectfully as four caskets were carried through the streets to the cemetery.