The Last Supper: And Other Stories

by Howard Fast

  “As if they intended to put him on ice and just keep the corpse awaiting you,” his wife commented sourly.

  “Now maybe they would, knowing how folks will come from here and there as the news spreads.”

  “He’s buried deep under right now,” the son Joshua said.

  “And if that’s the case, I’ll have me a glass of rum on his grave and toast him good, God bless him.”

  “Good riddance to a trouble maker,” his wife said, and he told her sharp:

  “You shut your mouth, Annie. I never took a hand to you, but sure as there’s a God in heaven I will, talking that way.”

  “A sudden belief in God?” the son Adam said.

  “I never had no trouble with God, you young fool—just never stood in no awe of Him nor no other, I tell you that! And how would you know today when there ain’t men left! And how would you know about old Samuel either?” thinking to himself, by all that was holy, he wouldn’t come back, but go and pay his respects and then ship onto some four-master out for nowhere, even if he went as a cook’s helper.

  “Wouldn’t know a thing about him,” the son Adam agreed.

  “Still I’m going, and that’s that, so we don’t need to hash it over and over. I’m going, do you hear me? And I’m going on my best mare with my best suit and my best hat, and I’m going to pay my respects regular, deep and regular and sorrowful. Do you hear?”

  But he thought to himself, there will be no one to weep, no one to know the truth of it, no one to remember, when it was all so long ago and like a dream that it had ever happened at all. And that very morning, he saddled up the mare and left for Boston.

  It was a two hundred mile trip to Boston, and no more Indians along the way to threaten your scalp and no more danger of British patrols, as there was once a quarter of a century past, but everywhere the mushroom growth of town and city and mill and farm, with the Yankees out to make a dollar where a dollar was to be made. The copper smelter smoked and the iron works glowed red by night; the gathered corn stood in the fields. The geese honked south in mighty flocks, for the Yankees had not yet figured out a way to get rid of the geese as expeditiously as they had gotten rid of the deer, that had once been as thick as flies over this land.

  But for all of that, the land was still beautiful, with the lovely Mohawk wending its way toward the lovely Hudson, and with the shadow of the pretty Berkshire hills on the eastern horizon. It was autumn time, the maples already red, the birch yellow, the dead leaves rustling as they fell, and the wonderful clean smell of coming winter on the air; and as old Reuben Dover rode along, he felt that his youth was flowing back into his veins. He felt free and footloose and full of good memories, and sitting bolt upright in his saddle, he put back his head and sang:

  “Oh, pretty are the riggers as they sail across the sea,

  But prettier is the lassie who waits at home for me,

  With her sewing and her spinning and her weaving

  and her song,

  May the best winds only grant it that she never waits

  too long,

  That she never waits too long,

  That she never waits too long,

  For when I up and left her, I did mighty wrong.”

  The better he felt, the younger he felt, the more certain Reuben Dover became that he would not go back to the farm, to his family, to his pinch-faced, carping wife. And when round about sundown, he saw a little stone Dutch inn, nestling in the shade of two giant maples and two giant oaks, with all the wood trim painted a neat white, he made up his mind to spend the night here. Most probably it was true that Sam Adams had already been taken into the earth, and a body in a grave will keep for more than a day or two, and it was seven years now since he had gone anywhere at all. He was in no hurry, and the dead were not impatient.

  The boy who took his horse had been a crawling babe the last time he came this way, and that gave him additional thought about what happens when a man beds down in just one place. The innkeeper had a new wife, and sitting before the strong red fire in the tap-room were two of the new men, the selling men or salesmen as they were occasionally called, who took merchandise made in the Boston and Albany mills and drummed it to the farmers through the valleys. In the old days, Reuben recalled, you could always find at one of these wayside inns a Jew or a Scotsman with his pack of trinkets, cheap jewelry and piece goods, going out with a couple of pack animals to trade with the Indians for furs; but such men did a barter business pure and simple, while these new ones drummed for cash sale and nothing else. The wandering Jews and Scotsmen of the old times went out with never a thought for the time it took and were always ready to pass the time of the day over a cup of coffee, but these new ones were sharp and brisk with no time for anything that stood in the way of business.

  There was also a neighborhood farmer, Fromm Vanjoorden by name, who had come in for a glass of hot rum and butter, and there was the post rider from Albany, a tall and sallow man in his middle thirties. The merchandise men were stout and neatly put together, intent on the fat barmaid, but Reuben, full of the juices of youth, set himself on the innkeeper’s wife, a fine-looking woman of fifty or so; and when the innkeeper himself failed to appear, he began to think of the coming night just like some hot lad of twenty. He pinched her behind and shouldered her thigh and put away a pint of hot rum before his dinner.

  She, on the other hand, looked sidewise at him, her blue eyes sparkling; for he was lean and hard and healthy-looking, for all of his years, and her husband was off to the market in Albany.

  Talk was on, and Reuben listened before he put his oar into it. He himself was a Democrat and a strong one, but the two drummers seemed to talk Federalist talk; and whenever Reuben heard Federalist talk, he began to think of himself not so much as a Democrat as a Jacobin. He kept eyeing the Dutch farmer, speculating on whether he might not be a Jacobin too, which would make the odds better if he had to put the two damned fat fools in their places. But you could never tell about a Dutchman; they were as unpredictable in politics as in anything else; and Reuben bided his time until one of the salesmen called Tom Jefferson a “scut” and a “canting liar.”

  “I didn’t hear you,” Reuben said.

  “I said, liar.”

  Then the lady of the house said, “Not in my house. No such talk in my house—or out you go.”

  “It’s a free country, ain’t it?”

  “And no great credit to you,” the Dutch farmer drawled. “No sir, mister.”

  Reuben was bulwarked. When the older of the two drummers said, just as he had expected, “What is this, Jacobinism?” he rose to his feet and answered: “God damned right!”

  “There are ladies present.”

  “My apologies,” Reuben said to the lady gallantly. And to the salesmen, “Did you call me a Jacobin?”

  “If the name fits.”

  “It fits,” Reuben said shortly. “And better than that, I’m on my way to pay my respects to the best of them all, old Sam Adams. I’ll drink to him.” He raised his glass.

  “Not me, sir.”

  A long-limbed, red-faced man came in then, sleeves rolled and his leather apron of trade on him. “Did I hear that name?” he demanded. “Who’s talking about Sam Adams?”

  “I am, sir,” Reuben said aggressively.

  “For him or against him?”

  “For him. If you’d a come a moment sooner, you would a heard me called a Jacobin too.”

  “Are you one?”

  “I am.” And then he added, “What in hell are you?”

  “A bottle blower,” the man in the apron answered.

  “Politically?”

  “A Democrat to my friends, and to them—” Nodding at the drummers, “Jacobin.”

  “Let me buy you a drink,” Reuben said.…

  By nine o’clock, he was comfortably, homely drunk as he hadn’t been in fifteen years, and he had kissed the landlady in the pantry and given her his gold watch fob to remember him by, not ten years from now, bu
t around midnight, when he said he might just happen along to her room; and she called him a dirty old goat, which made him feel prouder than he had felt in a long time.

  The two salesmen went to bed, and Reuben, the Dutch farmer, and the glass blower held down the fireside, with the boy fetching wood to keep it blazing and port wine to be mulled and keep them burning at least to a degree.

  Like most of the Dutchmen, the farmer had served in and out of the New Jersey line, and the glass blower had been on the long hike north to Canada with Arnold, whom he hated with a just and ripening hatred, not a quiet resentment at all. But neither of them had known Sam Adams, whom they toasted again and again.

  “God bless him,” they said.

  “He never had a bad moment with God,” Reuben pointed out. “A most religious man, orthodox, if you understand, but it never interfered with his tactics. Now Joe Warren never believed in God; came from cutting up too many bodies and seeing what was underneath, but Samuel respected the quality of disbelief. Could he have built a movement of Puritans—now answer me that?”

  “That’s granted,” the glassblower said.

  “So when Reverend Sutter came to him and demanded that Warren go out for being a damned atheist, Samuel asked him, Now what is most necessary for belief—mind, heart or body? Sutter thought to outsmart him, and knowing that Sam was one for tactics, answered—mind, just like that. Not at all, said Samuel, for I believe with the heart and Joe Warren—before Sutter could get a word in—believes with the body. There he was. A man who never had a mite of trouble with God.”

  “And I wonder how he died?” the Dutch farmer speculated.

  “You can be just as sure that he died confident—and with everyone in that cursed city hating him,” Reuben said.

  “There should be a delegation,” the glass blower nodded.

  “With Yankees?” the farmer asked scornfully.

  “Now wait a minute. There are good ones and bad ones. What did we build a movement out of, but the Yankees?”

  “The quality of him was Yankee,” Reuben agreed. “My own folks came from Plymouth, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of, but he was not limited. Not narrow. Let me point this out to you—what did they fix on when they wanted to put a noose around his neck and squeeze the character from him: that he was a thief, and I tell you this, what honesty was to him is something different than what it is to you and me. With him it was the way of life, that no man should be ground down under another man. All right, they still grind them down, don’t they, but it’s a little different and it will be more different, mark my word. Well, what for did they make out of him a tax collector? That was the mad thing to do, and did they expect him to collect from poor people who could not pay? But mark this, there was a man who went out of the world with as little as he came into it, never a penny—and never a penny did he have but the little bit he needed to eat and feed his children.”

  “Amen,” the farmer said.

  “Now you ask them that go on the road to drum business. They won’t say many amens.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  A little drunk now, for he had more this evening than any evening in a long while, and that on top of the wonderful sensation of freedom, Reuben’s thoughts wandered idly through the past, with now and then just a flicker of anticipation toward the immediate future and the landlady. When men sit for hours looking at a roaring fire, and getting a little drunk in the bargain, they will see in the flames what they want to see, and sometimes very clearly indeed. Into life in Reuben Joshua Dover’s memories came the Boston of long, long ago, when it was Sam Adam’s town, when the carpenters and rope-makers felt for the first time on the continent the inevitable and irresistible strength of men who work together, and when they formed their revolutionary committees and lit a spark that burned for quite a while.

  In his mind’s eye, he breasted the hills to the west, and saw the whole pretty little town standing on its neck of land, and then he went walking on, through the gates and along Orange Street, but he was young and hale and bold, and the palms of his hands—from walking the ropes—were hard enough to drive tenpenny spikes with, as the saying went. As he walked on, he saw the Boston that would not be again, that strange, unruly, stiff-necked, puritanical yet worldly, narrow yet cosmopolitan town that had already sent its ships to every corner of the civilized and the uncivilized world too. He saw the pigtailed sailors, parrots and monkeys riding their shoulders, and he recalled how carefully the commission merchants and the prim bankers avoided them. He saw the fat, respectable, matronly housewives shudder aside as the tarts passed, for that was a time when for every two honest women in the town there was one that was a little less than honest. He saw the swaggering students from Cambridge, arm in arm, blasphemously singing, “Study is the most original sin!” And of course, he saw Sam Adams. You could not take a walk through Boston along Orange, up Newbury, through Marlbrough, then around past King’s Chapel and over to Hannover along the neck without running into the old man and having him button-hole you and say, in that close, inviting, confidential way of his:

  “Now what do you hear, Reuben?”

  “A ruddy sunset,” if you were one of them, and Reuben Dover was from the beginning. Then the old man roared with laughter and squeezed your arm in a way that made you want to do anything for him.

  “Working?”

  “On and off, Sam. If the ships don’t sail, you don’t need rope, and that’s the mighty hell of it.”

  “Sure, Reuben.” It wasn’t just that he seemed to feel for you, he did feel for you. “Who takes the ships from the port—they or us? But I tell you, there are other uses for a prime piece of cordage. A mill turns on rope, and you can pull a cannon with a rope harness—and, do you know, I have even heard it said that a man can hang on the end of a rope?” It came as a question, and questioningly the pale gray eyes regarded you, the big, square face gently curious, the big square nose inquiring rather than aggressive. Only the mouth was round and full and sensitive as well as sensuous, and knowing.…

  Then in his mind’s eye, Reuben Dover saw more, for he passed the day with Sam Adams and walked on to the Old Wharf, where the ships lay in every stage of construction, some with just ribs and keel, like herrings picked clean, some with flesh over the ribs, and some all decked and ready for the launching. One year merged with another, and as he dreamed, looking into the flames, he put the years together haphazardly, the good ones with the bad ones, taking from them what he wanted. So it was that when he came to the shipyards, they hummed with work, and men put down their hammers, saws and planes to wave to him and ask him how it went in the walks.

  Rope to rig them, cloth to sail them, food to stock them and men to man them. Then they would dance over the waves like girls to their lovers and across the whole world the yellow folk and the brown folk and the black folk would see the colors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

  He shook himself awake, wiping the, moisture from his eyes, and muttering, “He should a perished then, and what good was it for him to go on living, when I met up with one who had seen him in Boston, sitting by the window of his house, his spittle dripping and his hands so palsy they couldn’t hold—and never a word of sense out of him, except when you called him a Jacobin, and then the old pride flowed back into him for a minute, God granting him that——”

  “Who?” the glass blower asked.

  “Why the old man, Sam, who else? He lived a proper life,” Reuben said. “He did what he had to do and what he intended to do. And when he had finished, he had finished, that’s all.”

  “And when was that?” came gently.

  “To put your finger on it? As a moment? You know, I think I could do it—and I’ll tell you of it, too, word by word. It was in ’seventy-five, and he was already by then fifty-three years old—or was it fifty-four? Well, I don’t know and it don’t matter, does it? There he was, anyway, riding his horse across the ploughed fields of Andy Simmons——”

  “When was that, Reuben
?” the glass blower inquired, for Reuben Dover was nodding over his rum as he spoke, tending to wander and live through the scene himself, without much thought for the others.

  “I told you in ’seventy-five.”

  “But when? On what side of the year?”

  “I told you in April!” Reuben shouted, sitting bolt upright, but the Dutch farmer wagged an uncertain finger at him and said: “Now you did not—not at all.”

  “And when would it be but in April?” He looked from face to face, and then he smiled, the wrinkles spreading all over his dry, leathery features. The landlady came up then, pulling a stool alongside his chair, and once again Reuben noticed what a fine figure of a woman she was, a ripe plum with clothes like the peel, for all of her years.

  “Shouting,” she said. Her voice was deep and filled with honey, but maybe Reuben was drunk and a woman’s voice would be like that the way he felt now.

  “In April, I told them,” he said.

  “Yes—and look at the time.” She pointed to the tall clock in the corner, and the hands were coming together for midnight. “Would you burn every stick of wood I have?” she wanted to know.

  “And how would you have us keep out the chill, woman?” the glass blower wanted to know.

  “There are other ways,” she answered, smiling at Reuben, who smiled back at her, just as graciously.

  “Time enough,” he said. The clock began to strike, and he cocked his head, and then they all listened until the twelve chimes had sounded out. “I’ll cut you wood in the morning. I’ll cut you a cord and stack it up as high as your nose. Now have a drink with us and I’ll tell you about that April.”

  She poured rum from a pitcher, a tot for herself too, and sat on the stool, stroking a cat that cuddled in her lap. She hummed a little, the soft sound of a country dance, which Reuben didn’t mind at all. It made a sound together with the roar of the blaze, and he wet his throat and told about that sweet April morning, with the sun coming up all red and clean in the east, and the crows flying and cawing, and the beads of dew all over the fields.