Cape Cod

by William Martin

  He wasn’t surprised that they—whoever they were—had finally decided to break in this morning. Rake had driven off at seven o’clock to have his car serviced. Then he had walked the two miles back with the Cape Cod Times and a quart of milk under his arm. Which meant there was no car in his driveway and the place looked deserted.

  And the damn jogger, the one who’d been running by every day for the last two weeks, was snooping in the backyard. Cute disguise, that jogging suit. Let someone put on a pair of silk shorts and some astronaut shoes, and he looked as innocent as a kid hunting for a lost dog. Rake had been around long enough to know that nothing was innocent.

  “Hello?” The jogger was at the back door now, calling into the house. He was about twenty-eight, blond, and bland enough to be some graduate student waiting on tables at night so that he could go to the beach during the day. A bead of sweat dripped off the tip of his nose.

  And a shotgun pressed against the back of his neck.

  Rake couldn’t tell if that was sweat or something else he saw running down the guy’s leg a moment later.

  The jogger said he’d sprained his ankle and wanted to use the phone. Rake said he wasn’t born yesterday and told him to go use a Bigelow phone. The jogger limped off, muttering about a crazy old man. The limp sure looked real, but you couldn’t be too careful.

  iii.

  Geoff Hilyard sat beneath the skylight in his studio. He had resolved to work, but his mind kept wandering to the Brewster town meeting that night.

  Rake and Clara were offering their land, provided that the town would acquire the rest of the island for conservation. Probable cost, six million. Nobody thought the article would pass. The Board of Selectmen opposed it. So did the Finance Committee. But Rake had gotten the signatures to put it on the warrant, so the meeting was called.

  If the article passed, Geoff would be off the hook, and well paid for any land the town took. But he would lose the commission, the chance to do something big. But he loved the island. But the money and prestige from a big commission… It had been like that all morning, a leapfrogging game of contradictions playing inside his head.

  He had an old topographical map of the island pinned to the wall above his drafting table, along with photographs he had taken of the high-peaked Aptucxet replica, the 1793 house where Rake lived, and the barn behind it.

  He often found that sketching something old gave him new ideas. He used a 2b pencil on yellow trace. It felt familiar in his hand. And it felt good to be in his office, in the loft of the barn behind his Truro house, right beneath the skylight where he worked best. Janice was right. This was what he should be doing instead of treasure hunting.

  He drew Rake’s house from several angles. Nothing came. He studied the deep slope of the Aptucxet roof. Did the first Jack’s Island house look like that, or was it the more conventional saltbox? And what of the barn? It was said that Quakers met there in the days of the persecutions. He drew it.

  By the mere act of drawing, he was taking another step toward taking the job, toward wanting it.

  “Traitor,” a voice whispered up behind him, and Geoff spun about with his 2b pencil like a knife in his hand.

  George’s fleshy face was grinning at him.

  “For a big guy, you move quiet.”

  George slapped his belly. “I’m losin’ weight, remember. You start pushin’ forty, you have to toughen up. Otherwise, the young ones won’t look at you.”

  “You ought to find someone to settle down with. It’s dangerous out there.”

  “Tell me about it.” George looked over Geoff’s shoulder. “I brought my metal detector.”

  “Metal detector? You’re kidding.”

  “No. You’d be amazed at the conversations you can start. We could walk the beach, pretend we’re looking for the metal clasp of the Mayflower logbook. Maybe we could both make a friend. We’ll find you a girl.”

  “I don’t need any more friends right now. And Jimmy’s right. The log’s just an old legend.” Geoff began to sketch the barn.

  “Jimmy’s a tight-ass, in the figurative sense, of course. Ever since his tribe lost the Mashpee land suit, he’s gotten whiter and whiter and tighter and tighter, just buried his anger. He’s no fun anymore. Take it from one who knows. You can’t hide things.”

  Geoff sketched in the roofline and drew the door. “So why am I a traitor?”

  “You’re sketching elevations for that island. And you don’t want to do it.”

  “But I’m an architect.” Geoff felt George boring in. He concentrated on the point of the pencil and sketched a door. “Did you know that Quakers used Jack’s Island for their worship at the beginning?”

  “Now there was a group that let it all hang out.” George flopped onto the cracked old leather sofa that smelled like the barn. “They said what they thought, did what was right. I read a lot about them when I was younger… before I did what was right for me.”

  “Before you came out?”

  George shrugged. “History has metaphors for all of us. The Quakers were treated almost as badly as… well, as guys like me.”

  Geoff drew a bay window on the side of the barn. He thought about the courage of the Quakers, the first faith to challenge the orthodoxy of the Pilgrims. Courage… gumption.

  These words went together, like Ma Little’s conundrum: Who was more courageous? The changers, like Dickerson, or those who resisted change, like Rake?

  “Like I said when you were wondering about moving down here”—George locked his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling, more like the patient than the doctor—“sometimes you just have to flip the bird to the whole world.”

  “It’s not that simple when you have a family.”

  “It will be if you find that log.”

  “Or if I take the Bigelow deal.”

  Inside the bay window, Geoff drew the heads of four Quakers. A family, doing what they thought was right…

  CHAPTER 14

  October 1660

  More True Faiths

  “What they do?”

  “Sit.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothin’. Just sit, like loggerheads.”

  Jack Hilyard and Autumnsquam peered through the oiled-paper windows at the people inside the barn.

  They sat on benches arranged to form a square. Mostly they were silent, but from time to time, the spirit came upon one who declaimed from Scripture or gave personal witness or spewed criticism of the colony’s leaders.

  Then Christopher Hilyard would ask, “Who doth not quake at the word of the Lord?”

  And the Indian woman at his side would answer, “Only those who love him not.”

  Those in the barn called this worship, but in the eyes of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, it was subversion.

  “Bloody Quakers,” muttered Jack.

  “More true faiths.”

  “Bad enough they get me own son to join ’em. But now comin’ here to hold their foul meetin’. I’ve a mind to turn ’em out, I do. Chris and his squaw, the bloody lot of ’em.”

  “He your son, she my niece, even if they both bloody Christians. No turn out.”

  Jack kicked at the soil and stared out to sea. In the beginning, he had never looked out from this place without feeling the urge to pinch the back of his hand and assure himself he was not dreaming. But after five years, the island was his for certain, and he dreamed only of keeping it.

  He had even given it the name in Jones’s journal. Jack’s Island it was called, and it showed Jack’s shaping hand.

  A two-story post-and-beam house had risen in the middle of a clearing. Not far from the back door was the well sweep, though Jack rarely drank water. Beyond that lay a huge pile of firewood, for in this land of plenty, he would never be cold again. About twenty feet back of the house, he had built a barn over the root cellar he discovered that first winter. And where once a path had led through oak and beech to the water, an open field now rolled to the tryworks, where
oil was rendered from whale blubber and smoke stained the sky like sin upon a clean soul.

  As it was the Sabbath, the smoke was sin in truth as well as metaphor.

  The trees behind the barn had fed the first trying fires, and tall hardwoods across the island had fallen to keep the fires burning, to keep the oil flowing, to give the people of Plymouth and Boston and London itself the essence of Cape Cod whale, distilled from godlike majesty to a clean, pure beam of light. In Jack’s eyes, such work was worthy of any Sabbath.

  The colony disagreed. And it seemed that a delegation was coming to make their point. Or perhaps it was the presence of the Quakers that brought them, for nothing had so challenged the colony as this new form of devotion, not even the French.

  In either event, a shallop was plowing down from the northwest, riding the incoming tide, and Jack cursed at the sight of it.

  “Want put out try fires?” asked Autumnsquam.

  “They seen the smoke. No sense actin’ afeared of ’em now.” He pounded on the door of the barn.

  “Our service be not finished,” said Christopher from within.

  Jack kicked at the door. “ ’Twill be when that Plymouth boat gets here.”

  Those words were enough to swing open the barn door and summon forth the soldiers of a new religious rebellion. They neither hurried nor seemed troubled that Colonial officials were coming, perhaps to arrest them. They made their goodbyes with cheer and trooped off toward the inland path.

  Jack watched them for a time—old Goody Privet, the Smiths and their five children from Eastham, the Stubbses and the Burkitts from Yarmouth—simple people whose lives had a simple center. If they failed to grow their crops, catch their fish, cut their firewood, they died. But when they sought to simplify their faith, they complicated their own lives and confused everyone else’s.

  “Get thyself home and put on clothes of color,” he said to his son.

  “Black be good enough.”

  “It be a badge of defiance,” said Jack.

  “And who hath been more defiant than thee?”

  “I done it quiet. That’s why we got this island.”

  “Quiet defiance, in some places, be called cowardice.”

  “Stop.” Autumnsquam put himself between father and son. “Bad word for son to say to father.” He stamped his foot on the ground for emphasis. He was smaller than either of them, scrawnier even than Jack, but he had always commanded their respect, had insisted on it. He could not, however, stop the bad words now.

  Jack looked at his son. “I done no grovelin’ when the French fired on me that day. Nor did thy brother.”

  “ ’Twas that day I became a follower of the Gospel of Inward Light, when I saw Robby Bigelow’s face shattered because men chose to make war and call it holy. I make war on no man, nor do I grovel for any.”

  “Instead thou goes to Boston and defies the Puritans like a damn fool.” Jack looked at Autumnsquam. “Gets himself banished from the Massachusetts Colony, he does. Gets his ears cut off for good measure.”

  “White men know good torture. Now know good talk, father, son, both.” Autumnsquam whacked a forearm against Jack’s chest, then Christopher’s. His whales’-tooth bracelet jangled like a shaman’s bag of bones. His whales’-tooth necklace, which he wore like a collar, pressed angrily into his flesh. “Good talk. Talk good.”

  But Jack kept his eyes on his son. “After Boston, he comes back to the Plymouth Colony and invites his Quaker friends to my island for a little Sabbath blasphemy.”

  “ ’Tis no blasphemy to follow thy conscience and the Bible, ’stead of ministers and magistrates,” said Christopher. “And this island be mine as well as thine. We did terrorize defenseless priests and blackmail a grievin’ man to gain it. We each paid a piece of our soul for a bit of freedom. I use mine as I see fit.”

  Jack glanced again toward the beach. “We’ll chew on all this later. Get Amapoo out of sight.”

  “She be my wife. She stand by my side.”

  Amapoo cast her eyes toward the ground. She wore a black dress with a white collar and now called herself Patience, but shiny copper pendants still hung from her ears and beaded strings held her long hair in place.

  “Then the both of you get out of sight.”

  Christopher led Patience into the house, though it was Jack’s suspicion that they would not be there for long.

  “Very sad,” said Autumnsquam.

  “What?”

  “Amapoo and Chris. They learn ’bout Kautantowit. But thee boy turn back to Bloody Christ, and she go with him. Very sad. Bad talk. Bad talk.”

  “Aye.” Jack peered down at the beach, where the shallop had just grounded. “Methinks I see the gray beard of Ezra Bigelow.”

  The world believed it was grief that turned Ezra Bigelow gray. Jack knew there was another reason.

  On the night that the messenger brought the news from Port Royal, Ezra Bigelow cursed God. He went out into the darkness, like Jack Hilyard so many years before, and shook his fist at the heavens. Of all the Englishmen to fight, why had God chosen his son, his brilliant boy, flower of his faith, future of his colony, foe of its French enemies, why had God chosen his son to be martyred in the grass of Acadia? Robinson had died a true Christian soldier, they said, but still he was dead, and the only one to die.

  As the days passed and his hair, strand by strand, began to go gray, Ezra found himself turning to the Bible after all, and he found comfort—in Lamentations, in Job, in the joyous conclusion of Luke. He saw that God, in his own good time, had come around to visiting upon Ezra the pain that few men escaped, and in his own good time, God would bring Ezra and his son together again.

  Jack Hilyard came around to visiting Ezra a week later, in his own good time.

  Ezra knew of Christopher’s kindness to Robinson on the field and thanked Jack. “I understand why Jonathan joined that expedition. But thou and Christopher art neither of thee orthodox men.”

  “We went for booty. That make us as orthodox as any.”

  After the French had capitulated, those who wished were allowed to take to their ship. The rest, including the Capuchins, were given “freedom of conscience,” though the missionaries lasted little more than a year under English masters. In return, the French were made to yield up more than ten thousand pounds’ worth of weapons, skins, and supplies, and every English soldier earned a share.

  “Thy portion could not have been great,” Ezra said. “Thou lost more than a month of whaling season.”

  “Me portion was nothin’ as compared to this.” Jack pulled from his pocket a transcription from Master Jones’s journal.

  The next morning, Ezra’s hair and beard were the color of a gull’s back, and Jack was preparing to go to Nauseiput….

  Now the Plymouth visitors found Jack in his new barn, sharpening a flenser. Autumnsquam stood at the door, harpoon in hand, like a picket.

  “A fine day to sail down from Plymouth,” said Jack.

  “Hello, Pa.” Jonathan Hilyard had taken a Plymouth wife and moved back to the seat of the colony, where now he captained the militia. “We come as representatives of the General Court.”

  “We come also as friends,” said Ezra Bigelow.

  Jack touched iron to the grindstone and tiny sparks flew in the shadows. “Me son proclaims himself from the Gen’ral Court, and Ezra Bigelow calls himself friend. The world does change too much.”

  “ ‘Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath’ has not changed since Moses,” Brewster Bigelow clamped a hand on his hip. He was nineteen, the youngest of Ezra’s children. He wore a green waistcoat with yellow satin piping and had just enough hair on his face to cover his boyish blemishes.

  Jack pretended to ignore him. “We found us a fine big drifter up Billin’sgate way.”

  “Fine big stinker,” said Autumnsquam.

  “Aye. Must’ve been there a week. ’Tis a true marvel you didn’t smell him in Plymouth. Flensed him on the beach, we did, then hauled the blubber down here, st
ink and all. If we didn’t try him out today, he’d’ve been too far rotted for anythin’ but manure.” Jack tested the edge of his iron with his thumb and now looked at the younger Bigelow. “The Lord wanted us to use that whale, son. So he put him on that beach.”

  “A broken Sabbath ain’t why we come, Pa.” Jonathan went over to the grindstone and knelt beside his father.

  “How be me granddaughter?”

  “Healthy as a horse.”

  Jack’s smile folded his face into a thousand creases. “A little beauty, she is, and me pride for certain.”

  “Come spring, there’ll be another.”

  Jack gave out a hearty laugh. “Thou old cock.”

  Jonathan blushed. “I’ve a lovin’ wife, Father.”

  “And a lovin’ old dad.”

  “But a Quaker for a brother,” said Brewster Bigelow.

  Jack looked at Ezra, who remained in the sunshine, beneath the shadow of his wide black hat. “Easy to see where the lad come from, Ezra.”

  “The colony knows Christopher’s a Quaker,” said Ezra.

  “I never seen a Quaker in me life.”

  “What be Quaker?” asked Autumnsquam.

  Ezra glanced at the old Nauset. “Better a praying Indian at Portanimicut Plantation, my friend, than a lying Indian at Jack’s Island.”

  “Me no need plantation to learn ’bout white God. Plantation for lapdogs. Me free. Me pray to Kautantowit. And”—Autumnsquam raised the harpoon—“me no lie.”

  The harpoon whizzed at Ezra, past his ear, and buried itself in the oak on the far side of the clearing.

  “Arrest this bloody savage,” Brewster ordered Jonathan Hilyard.

  “Me no bloody. Tree bloody.”

  Sure enough, a red stain was trickling down the gray bark. Autumnsquam walked past Bigelow and pulled the harpoon out of the tree. On the tip of the blade, a squirrel still twitched. “Kautantowit send us dinner. Squirrel stew. Nuff for two. Me go fix now.”