Cape Cod

by William Martin

“I like this barn.” She went inside.

  “Then it shall be yours.”

  “Build a house… buy my island…” She moved into the shadows as he pursued her from the sun, the young privateer stepping out of her girlhood memories. “I don’t think you know what you want.”

  “I think I do.” He stalked toward her. He put his hands on her shoulders. She raised her face to his—

  And Leyden Doone stepped from the shadows and hit Sam Hilyard over the head with a shovel. “You got to be careful, Miss Hannah. You ain’t seen what some fellers got between their legs.”

  iv.

  Sam stored the lumber beneath a sailcloth and came often to check on its seasoning. By the following autumn, they had seen more of each other than most couples ever did before deciding on marriage, but she had decided only to hold off Eldredge Dickerson’s proposal. When Sam was at sea, she mapped her calendar, so that she might imagine where he was each week. When Sam slipped into a prostitute in some port city, he imagined Hannah beneath him.

  But Hannah would not allow him to build her a house or buy half the island, because those proposals were prelude to one of a more personal nature. She was not yet ready to commit herself to any man, and even if she loved Sam, she feared her father, whose disapproval of Sam was well known.

  “Why do you hate him?” she once asked.

  “He is not a God-fearing man.”

  Hannah could not know that Solomon had killed one Hilyard because of her ideas, betrayed another out of fear, and detested a third who coveted his daughter. Those were things a man kept to himself.

  In the spring of 1794, Sam sailed for South Carolina with a cargo of rum and barrel staves, which he exchanged for flour and rice. From Charleston he wrote Hannah that if they did not begin building by fall, the fine lumber would rot. Then he headed for Spain.

  Hannah understood his meaning and gave it much consideration. But her father had made a promise: if she continued to oversee Jack’s Island skillfully and married a God-fearing man like Eldredge Dickerson, he would include her in the larger deliberations of Bigelow and Son.

  It was during this time that she was most thankful for Leyden Doone and his shovel. She had never enjoyed her couplings with her husband. They were brief and to the point, and she had come to expect nothing more. Had she submitted to Sam that day in the barn, she might have found that not all men were so dry, and her passion might now have overwhelmed her good sense. But she kept her head… until the French Revolution threatened Sam’s.

  Before reaching the Spanish port of La Coruña, Sam’s ship was waylaid by a French frigate and taken to the city of Brest. France was in turmoil, its people starving, and a cargo of flour and rice had no future but the French belly. While barrels and sacks came off the ship, Sam and the crew were brought before a citizens’ tribunal, which promised to recompense them, in due time.

  Sam knew what that meant. He sent his crew home and conveyed to the tribunal his determination to wait for payment until hell froze over… or the French stopped drinking wine. Then he went to Paris, where the American envoy wrung his hands and said there was nothing he could do.

  On Cape Cod, there was nothing that Hannah could do but write letters:

  Dear Sam,

  No seafaring metaphors. No playful words. I love you. Know that. But you are a silly, stubborn man. You do not remain in France for the money, but for the principle. And principles get people killed. Before you choose to fight for them, make sure they are worth your head. I cried for you last night. I shall cry for both of us if you lose your head.

  But there was no need to cry for Sam. He spent two months holding out his hand in one revolutionary office after another, and partaking, with some disappointment and at considerable expense, in the carnal pleasures for which Paris had once been famous. He also studied the French manner of slicing through their chains with the guillotine and found it wanting.

  Hundreds were ridden past his window to their death, but he watched a beheading only once.

  A married couple caught his attention, middle-aged and graying, simple folk, from the look of their clothes, brave folk, from their bearing. As the tumbril took them through the screaming streets, something drew him after them. He could not guess at their offense—nor, perhaps, could they—but they stood with hands linked, eyes only on each other. In a world of madness, they had found their bearings. When they reached the platform, they went up together. They embraced without tears or a glance at the mob. Then the wife lay beneath the blade, as though settling down for a nap. After it fell, the husband did not look at the headless body twitching in the basket but went quickly to join his wife in spirit.

  Sam left Paris with government bills of exchange, payable in London, and the vision of two people who knew their bearings even in death. He was hailed by the merchants of Boston and welcomed by the woman he hoped would help him to keep his bearings for the rest of his life.

  “The bonnet is beautiful, Sam.”

  “It ain’t Paris fashion. There ain’t much of that these days. It’s a good Boston hat, the same yellow as the one you wore to the Serenity that day.”

  Yellow flattered her, bringing out the intense brown in her eyes. In egalitarian France, women still wore lip salve and astringent powders that scarred their skin. They plucked their brows to thin strands and piled their hair high on the top of their heads. Hannah was unadorned and all the handsomer for it, a new breed of woman, an American.

  The clouds were blowing east, ragged purple remnants of an autumn storm, as Hannah and Sam went walking out behind her house. “I worried for you, Sam.”

  “That’s what men and women are supposed to do.”

  “Worry…?” A cloud threw a shadow across her face.

  “Worry help… keep each other on course. I can build you a house by Christmas.”

  “You’re not a God-fearin’ man, Sam.”

  “I fear God whenever I go to sea.” The cloud passed.

  “You’re not a churchgoer.” She went toward the barn, her haven of contemplation.

  “I’ll take a pew in the First Church.”

  “My father won’t approve.”

  “He will once he sees what I pay for the land.”

  “Why must you have half the island?”

  “Pride. If we each own half, we start as equals.”

  Sam stopped in the doorway and peered into the corners.

  “Leyden is at the saltworks.” She laughed.

  “Good. I’ll build the house to last, like this barn, with a foundation.” He stamped across the floorboards. Then he knelt and rapped his knuckles against a plank. “Somethin’ here.”

  With a pinch bar he pried up the board. Neatly mortised into the joists was a compartment large enough to hold an abandoned mouse nest and some sort of tool wound in several thicknesses of marsh hay.

  The outer layer disintegrated. The second layer, wound in the opposite direction, was better preserved. A third layer, wrapped again as the first, smelled rancid and oily.

  “An axe,” said Hannah when the last strands fell away.

  “A damn strange axe.” Sam smelled the residue on his fingers. “Whale oil. Somebody covered it with whale oil to keep it.”

  “Look at the lettering on the shaft.”

  Sam studied the four symbols engraved into the metal. “I know what it says.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a message from the past. It says, ‘With this axe, build Hannah a house.’ ” Then he kissed her.

  v.

  Six weeks later, Solomon returned from a London trip to learn that his daughter had accepted the proposal of the one suitor to whom he objected.

  “We can’t reverse the sale, but we can damn well stop the marriage,” he told his son in the office of the Barnstable House.

  “I tried.” Elkanah was a copy of his father and sought to heighten the effect by adopting his father’s sudden gestures, colorless wardrobe, and small potbelly. Like his father, he was slender of shoulder
and chest, but the belly, which he hoped would lend stature, looked like nothing more than a pillow hung upon a coatrack. “Hannah said Sam Hilyard is the best shipmaster on Cape Cod, and we are far better served if he serves our family than someone else’s.”

  It may have occurred to Solomon that this union represented a final victory over the Hilyards, but he could never allow Bigelow blood to be mingled with that of the invective-spewing Outcast of Billingsgate. “Hannah loses everything.”

  “What?”

  “If she marries Sam Hilyard, she loses any claim to our future. If she takes Eldredge Dickerson, I give her half of everything upon my death.”

  “Half?” Elkanah nearly slipped from his chair.

  “Not to your liking, but suitable to our future.”

  vi.

  As the days grew shorter, Sam hurried to finish the house. He broke down Jack Hilyard’s old saltbox, no mighty task, given the work of the termites; he saved what timbers were sound and burned the rest in a great conflagration of dry wood and crackling bugs.

  Then he dug a foundation hole and lined it with ballast stones that rose two feet above the sand. This meant the termites would have a harder time reaching wood and beginning their work. The foundation was wide, but the house would hug the ground.

  “A short hoist and a long peak” was the Cape Cod saying. A story-and-a-half house presented a low profile to the ceaseless wind, which the windowless roof deflected. And though the upper rooms were small and low, they were all the warmer for their size. On the first floor, three rooms surrounded the chimney—a parlor to contain good furniture and family mementos, a master’s chamber, and a great room where the family cooked, ate, and spent most of its time.

  As a family grew, the house could grow, with new wings to accommodate new arrivals. The most frugal or penurious might even begin with half a house and expand as fortune permitted, but Sam Hilyard was neither, and he built with the best materials, indulging in dentil molding along the fascia boards, a fanlight above the doorway, and elegant pine paneling around the fireplaces.

  On a warm November afternoon, he was pegging pine planks in the great room. Salt making had ended for the season, so Scrooby Doone was helping Sam, while upstairs, Kwennit, Will, Barmy Burt, and Leyden Doone put down rough flooring.

  The house echoed with the sound of hammering and chatter, and Sam laughed to imagine what flights of conversational fancy might be transporting Burt and Leyden. In the way that he attracted misfits, he had drawn the Doones into his circle. Scrooby, by far the more scrutable, seemed the happier for it. He was at the other end of the board, using a pinch bar to hold it in place. When Sam laughed, he laughed, though he could not have known why.

  “Gettin’ married makes a man happy, don’t it?”

  “Happier than a ship’s cat findin’ rats in the bilge.”

  “I’m glad. I was a-scared of you at first.”

  “So was your brother.”

  “Yeah, but… yeah, but he’s stupid. I’d never hit you with a shovel.”

  A drop of perspiration rolled from the tip of Sam’s nose and splattered onto the new board.

  “Leyden believed all what he heard ’bout you, back in the Revolution. But I didn’t. I knew that if I ever worked for you, you’d treat me good.”

  Sam did not notice the agitation creeping into Scrooby’s voice. His attention was on the peg in front of him, and his mind was on Hannah. He gave no more thought to Scrooby’s chatter than to the crying of the gulls.

  “So… so, since you’re my boss now, I just want to say I’m sorry.”

  Sam’s mallet drove the peg downward. “Mmm-hm? What for?”

  “Tellin’ cousin Solomon what you was doin’ that night.”

  “What night?”

  “September the fourth, 1778.”

  Sam stopped hammering and turned to the childlike old man at the other end of the floorboard.

  “Solomon… he always said, ‘If you ever hear anythin’ ’bout the Hilyards, let me know.’ So… when I heard about you smugglin’ salt, so… I told him.”

  “And what did he do?”

  “He sent me and Leyden with a letter to the captain with the brass buttons. He said you was bad guys and you’d be caught. But I… I don’t think you’re a bad guy now, Sam, and I just wanted you to know that.”

  Scrooby’s words mixed once more with the cry of the gulls.

  vii.

  Hannah had gone to Nova Scotia to settle affairs with her late husband’s family, and she had returned by way of Barnstable, so that she could visit her father. Then she headed for Jack’s Island.

  The twenty-mile ride from Barnstable to the north parish of Harwich was never pleasant. Roads built upon sand were unstable, no matter how often they were rolled or covered with crushed shells. Cape Cod horses wore large shoes to support them, and the carriages went on wide wheels, because there were places where the road was no better than the beach.

  Still, Hannah was thankful for the long journey from her father’s home, because she had much to consider after seeing him. It was near dusk when she reached the island. She found Sam sitting on the half-finished floor, a fire of wood scraps roaring on the hearth, a rum bottle at his side. “My father’s given me a choice.”

  Sam kept his eyes on the fire. “Renounce him.”

  “He said if marry I you, I’ll never have an interest in the business.”

  “Do you love me, Hannah?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then prove it.”

  “We agreed that until our marriage, you could satisfy your lust elsewhere.”

  Sam grabbed her hand and pulled her down to his side. “My lust is not the issue… though you smell very good.”

  “You smell like rum.”

  “Rum clears my head.”

  “What clouds it?”

  “Love.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Nor did Sam. He had counted on her to help him find his bearings, and she brought only more confusion. He threw his arms around her, as if she were a buoy.

  “Sam—” She had come to find strength, and he asked her to be strong. His stubble scraped against her cheek. His arms surrounded her. His scent of rum and sweat, of tobacco and tar, comforted her in a way she could not define.

  The effect of her body was no less upon him. The smoothness of her skin, the softness of her breasts, the sweet scent of vanilla, these conspired to draw him from his anger and point him north once more.

  They remained like this for some time, and though their flesh knew the quickening that came to all lovers, they did not seek to satisfy it. The embrace was satisfaction in itself, taking them beyond desire, toward sustenance.

  A chunk of wood tumbled from the firebox, spattering sparks across the floor. The wood was pushed back, the sparks extinguished. They found each other’s arms once more. Their silence enfolded them, except for the small sigh when he kissed her… and the greater sigh when her bared breasts touched his chest.

  Sam Hilyard had rutted his way through the ports of America, the Indies, and Europe, and when he glanced at the shadow rocking on the wall, he thought once more of Kwennit’s term: the beast with two backs. Perhaps he and Hannah looked no more dignified than that, he with his ass in the air and his breeches at his ankles, she with her dress front unbuttoned and her skirts hiked up around her waist. But this was different. The spiritual pact they made in their embrace they sealed with the joining of their flesh.

  It was a long time before they spoke, before the world once more invaded their small circle of warmth.

  “Renounce him,” whispered Sam.

  “He’s my father.”

  “He informed the British of my father’s final voyage.”

  Hannah sat up and pulled her dress across her breasts. “Where did you hear this? Why have you not spoken of it before?”

  “Scrooby told me yesterday, by way of tellin’ me I’ve neither horns nor forked tail.”

  “You believe the words
of a man-child?”

  “That was your father’s thinkin’ when he sent two halfwits to the Somerset.”

  “You must let my father answer this charge.”

  Sam put his arm around her. “We own this island. I hold stock in the Nathan Hale. We have each other.”

  For Hannah, the glow of their love was fading like the warmth from a glass of wine. In its place was the heaviness that came when the wine wore away. “I cannot renounce my family, and if you believe this story—”

  “I leap a wide river to reach you, Hannah. Let your father keep his property. We’ll begin a life together.”

  Hannah stood, and as she collected herself, a reminder of their intimacy trickled onto her thigh. “I deserve part of what my father owns. And if I renounce him, there is no promise that your hatred for him will die.”

  “I’ll kill my hatred”—Sam sipped his rum—“by takin’ his daughter in exchange for my father.”

  “Is this how you see me? And what we just did, was it some kind of victory?”

  “You misunderstand.”

  The trickle on her thigh grew colder. She turned away and pressed one of her petticoats between her legs. “I’ll not be used as comeuppance for my father’s failings.”

  He stood, hitched his breeches. “Renounce him.”

  “You cannot love me too well if you know me no better than that.”

  Sam drained the bottle and shattered it in the fireplace. The flames jumped angrily.

  “Let my father answer this charge. I cannot live knowing you burn to kill him.” Hannah pulled on her shawl. “I’ll stay at Cap’n Jake’s.”

  “I’ll finish the floor, in honor of what we done on it.”

  That night Cap’n Jake brought Sam a note from Hannah:

  Dear Sam,

  You must trust me, and I must trust my father, you for the sake of our love, I for the sake of my blood. I do not wish to separate myself from you, yet there are times when a man must be alone, hearing nothing but the sounds of his own heart and unspoken voice. And it is these, more than the happy din of a noisy household, that will make him understand how much he needs the gentle things, a loving woman’s voice, the laughter of children. You and my father must speak, for we cannot marry under such conditions.