Peter Loon

by Van Reid

  The woodsmen had relaxed their guard against Peter by this time; Manasseh Cutts had wavered first of all, but Crispin Moss, when he dropped his wariness, did so wholeheartedly. The bigger fellow had found his voice and was telling them about a bobcat he once met while stepping out of a privy. Peter hardly heard the tale. The biscuit seemed dry and without flavor.

  Parson Leach leaned forward with his leather water bottle and offered it to him, saying, “That’ll do you good.”

  Peter wondered what the preacher could know about his thoughts, but thanked the man.

  “He was chasing a bird,” said Crispin Moss, “like a kitten, and I promise you, that bird was having fun with him.”

  The mention of the bird made Peter oddly conscious of the chirps and chatter in the woods about them. The first sip of water did more than slake his thirst; it lent savor to the bit of biscuit in his mouth. He took another sip, then another morsel and the weight in his chest seemed to lift just a little.

  Something else was said about birds, and Crispin Moss asked them “Have you ever seen this?” then cupping one hand in the other, he put them to his lips and made an odd sound, as if he were kissing the back of his fist. His eyes shone like a child’s as he flashed his gaze along the tops of the surrounding trees.

  Almost immediately there was a change in the quality of birdsound; the birds nearabouts grew excited, then louder, as they approached Crispin Moss and increased in number. Chickadees and sparrows and redpoles flitted in from the surrounding hills and groves.

  A trio of chickadees behind and above the woodsman’s big head looked so humanly curious that Peter almost laughed aloud. Crispin continued to make the kissing noise at the back of his hand and the birds were further emboldened. Several dropped onto the ground and hopped among the men, cocking their heads from side to side, flicking their tails in the pools of sunlight. When Crispin did leave off the noise the creatures stayed for a moment or two, looking startled to find themselves there before retreating to the nearby trees. From these safe heights, they set up a chorus of scolds and slowly dispersed into the forest and returned to their previous concerns.

  “I’ve seen an Indian do that,” said Manasseh Cutts, who was the first to stand.

  “I learned it from an Indian,” returned Crispin Moss. He seemed pleased with the trick. “Just a little fellow; hardly came to my belt.”

  “He wouldn’t have to be very little,” said the parson.

  The conversation was continued on foot, with Crispin Moss leading the way. Peter hardly felt rested; accustomed as he was to long hours tending field or cutting wood, he was not used to walking such distances and though he was a hard muscled lad, his feet and shanks were beginning to flag beneath him. But Parson Leach asked Peter to tell them about his father, and the young man forgot his sore muscles and his fatigue as he recalled Silas Loon to his companions.

  They rounded Haskell Hill to the east, and from another height found a plain view over the northeastern settlement of Balltown and the lake known as Great Bay.

  “There’s a place we should ask after your uncle,” suggested Parson Leach.

  The woodsmen loathed to lose the horse’s helpful labor, but it was not much further to Crispin’s relatives, so the two men released the animal of Parson Leach’s promise. Parson Leach was thankful for his horse’s sake, and the older woodsman allowed, in a wry manner, that the creature had worked enough for his master’s word.

  Manasseh and Crispin had reconciled themselves to Peter and shook his hand; they considered that he had proven himself mortal enough, after all, having had the good sense not to grow fins and disappear into a stream, or wings and leap from a hill.

  “‘Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue?’” said the parson before Manasseh Cutts and Crispin Moss turned east again. “Those are more words from Mr. Walton.”

  “He was a wise man,” said Manasseh Cutts, perhaps wryly, before leaving, “even did he write books.” He insisted that the parson and Peter Loon take a cut of the buck’s thigh. “It’ll make you more than welcome at the tavern down yonder,” he said, and though he was glad enough to be shaken of the young man who had appeared to spring full grown from the fallen creature, he inquired of Peter’s wounds before he left and wished him well. The preacher hung the deer thigh at his saddle and climbed onto Mars with a small groan.

  And so Peter Loon did not go to Patricktown, or even Plymouth Gore, that day, but accompanied Parson Leach and Mars around and down a series of small hills to the settlement on the shores of Great Bay in the part of the district known as Balltown. They flushed a partridge on one of these slopes and Peter was startled from a weary daze by the creature’s sudden noisy flight.

  There were about ten or twelve sizable buildings in the settlement, and as many small outbuildings and privies. Peter could see no church, or at least no building attempting to look like a church–no spire or high windowed nave. The street took a dogleg to the right and there were two or three more buildings nearer the shore of the wide lake.

  It was not Parson Leach’s first visit to the hamlet, as was made evident when they approached the single dirt street and he remarked that there were more people about than he had seen there before. He had, in fact, preached there on several occasions, which was evidenced by the greetings hailed to him by passersby, or more accurately lingerers round about the tavern in the midst of the little hamlet.

  “Souls or sovereigns will it be, Reverend Leach?” wondered one wag, who may have seen a book or two, even if he had never read one.

  As they neared the center of the settlement, Peter could sense the giddy air of important business that riles people who lurk along the periphery of understanding to foolish behavior. Two or three young men approached the parson to inquire if he had come into town because of the rumors flying about. “I don’t seek after rumor, as a general thing,” was his reply.

  “Do you think we’ll be to war again?” wondered another.

  “What, have the British come up river?” returned the parson, but Peter could see the man’s interest was up. “The last I heard, peace was signed, eighteen years hence, but I’ve been in the woods a fair bit.” There were enough horses and carts about that the few hitching posts in town were occupied and the parson tied Mars to the railing of the little porch outside the village tavern.

  “It’s our own Great Men come up the river, you might say,” said the first young fellow. Two or three older, more sober-faced gentlemen came up to the tavern stoop to see what the ruckus was.

  “You surprise me,” said the parson simply, indicating something opposite by his expression. “But Peter, here, and I would share out some of this thigh,” he informed the congregants outside the tavern, indicating the portion over Peter’s shoulder, “if there were a man with the price of the beer and victuals to go with it. And that man would have the doubled pleasure of telling us all the fox-talk and rumor hereabouts and why you’re all gathered here, if not to hear me preach.”

  7

  How Peter Loon and Parson Leach Were Received at the Ale Wife’s Tavern, Who They Met, and What They Learned There

  THE ESTABLISHMENT BEFORE THEM WAS KNOWN AS THE ALE WIFE’S tavern, though some simply called it the Fish Wife. Above the door there hung a sign, painted with the image of an alewife, a common enough fish thereabouts in the spring and early summer, though this one was dressed as an old woman, with a bonnet and rolling pin besides. Peter gaped at the sign while he approached the door, but was soon taken by the sight of Parson Leach’s long, gaunt frame entering the premises before him. He was then more conscious of the preacher’s height and his broad shoulders as the man followed three respectable looking fellows inside, and Peter marked the unexpected ease with which the parson moved his lanky form.

  The young man thought then to take the deer thigh with him, since it appeared to be the expense for their meal; he trudged up the tavern steps and into the dark interior.

  There was a single broad room in front,
with immense beams crowding low over the rough tables. Stools and a few chairs ranked these trencher-boards, and nothing was very far in construction from the raw wood as it had come from the sawmill. There was a broad fireplace at the other end of the room, but the fire was left small during an October day like this, and Peter could see a puff of steam when he let out a deep breath. He smelled something cooking, however, and guessed that the hearth taking up the backside of the chimney would be livelier as the evening meal was prepared.

  A man appeared in the doorway to the rear of the tavern and acknowledged the new patrons with a wave. “Knock this fire up,” he said to someone behind him, then he stepped forward and spoke cordially to his guests. “How be you, Mr. Leach.”

  “Hungry, Mr. Tillage. We’ve some venison we’d trouble you to cook, and those that share it with us will throw in for the dinner to go round it, if you please.”

  Tillage met them halfway across the tavern floor and shook the parson’s hand before taking the leg from Peter. “I’ve some pies and a thick soup cooking, and should I carve this up fine enough, it’ll all be ready before you’re much more hungry.” He hardly glanced at Peter, but took in the other men accompanying them. “Take the table by the hearth,” he suggested. “It’s cold as church in here, now, but Nora will stoke the fire and we’ll have it sociable before you know it.”

  Peter then noticed a girl kneeling before the fireplace. She was a thin creature with straight russet hair falling carelessly from beneath her cap. Her pale dress–more of a shift, with an old cloth belt around the middle–was a little large for her and more of a summer garment than something to wear when winter was on so close an approach. She stirred the coals and stacked kindling wood over them, then took a crude pair of bellows and blew up the flames, leaning close to the fire as if she were glad for a warm task.

  The girl looked over her shoulder for a moment, not regarding anyone in particular, but Peter saw that she was older than he had thought–a young woman, really, rather than a girl–and closer to his own age, perhaps. Peter was used to the look of hunger in the faces of children. Life in the backcountry was backbreaking and more often than not hand-to-mouth; it was a common enough practice, though by no means universal in those parts, to feed the parents and older children first, as they were the workers who kept the farm neck-above failure. Younger children learned quickly the art of scouring the dinner table once their elders retired, and scoured the countryside as well for the odd rabbit they might snare, for berries, and even birch bark when there was nothing else.

  But Peter had lived with the notion that a tavern keeper’s household was fat and jolly, and he was moved by the small, serious features, the high forehead and the large blue eyes before the young woman returned to her chore. She had not looked behind her above a moment or two.

  A few more things were said between the taverner and his guests before Tillage turned back and disappeared into the kitchen with the leg of venison. Peter lifted his hands and he had blood from the venison on them.

  “Follow him and there’ll be a tub to wash your hands in,” suggested the parson.

  Peter felt awkward and out of place, not knowing anyone, and never having been inside a tavern before. He did follow Mr. Tillage, however, and was directed to a bucket and a rain barrel just outside the back door. When he returned, chilled by the cold ablution, Mr. Tillage inquired where Peter hailed from.

  “Sheepscott Great Pond,” said Peter. Nora, the young woman at the fire, came in then and went out past him for an armload of wood. She gave Peter only a glance, and he looked after her for a moment before volunteering “Should I help bring in some wood?”

  Mr. Tillage glanced into the corner to Peter’s right, as quickly as a stone skips on water. Then he turned back to the venison, which he was cutting up, and said “If you like.”

  Peter followed Tillage’s quick look and was surprised to see a dark-haired and bearded man sitting in the corner by himself.

  “This is Nathan Barrow,” said the taverner. “Mr. Barrow, this is . . .”

  “Peter Loon.” The young man was half out the door, but he looked back at the man in the corner and nodded. Nathan Barrow only stared back, but like a man who is not sure he sees well. He was a medium sort of fellow with an unpleasant expression on his hairy face, such as one might wear if he smelled something bad, or was bound up in the privy.

  Peter stepped out into the sun, drying his hands against his breeches. Beyond another building and a narrow field, he could see the lake. To his left there was a crude lean-to and a neat pile of wood. The young woman was just finishing the stack in one arm. She looked strong enough, despite her thin carriage, as she hefted the load in both arms. When she turned, Peter found himself nodding to her, almost as an extension of the nod he had given to Nathan Barrow, but he averted his gaze and stepped aside for her. He looked back at Nora as he approached the woodpile, wondering what was so obviously feminine about her narrow bones in that shapeless shift. When she passed him this second time, he caught a glance of her wrist and thought he could span it with his thumb and forefinger.

  “There are a great lot of sinful men up to Sheepscott Great Pond,” said Nathan Barrow to Peter when the young man nudged open the door with his shoulder. He had taken a stick or two too many and was in fear of losing the balance of his load and looking a fool.

  “There are?” he said, for lack of any other response. “When were you there?” he asked.

  “I’ve never been,” said Barrow, but with an odd degree of in-difference in his voice. “That’s why I know.”

  Peter could hardly make sense of this statement as he hurried back into the tavern room.

  “Put you to work, did they,” said Parson Leach.

  Peter lay the wood upon the small stack beside the hearth as carefully and quietly as possible. He straightened a tipping length or two, then brushed the dirt and loose bark from his shirtfront. Nora, who was feeding the lengthening flames, turned her face up hardly an inch, and without looking at Peter, said, “thank you,” so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her.

  He nodded some more, then retreated to the nearest table, where the preacher and three other men sat and several others gathered round. Once she had the fire snapping, Nora returned to the kitchen.

  “I heard they stripped him clean,” one of these bystanders was saying, “and strapped his arse with branch bundles till he brayed like an ass himself.”

  “I heard they left him a sock and a sleeve,” said one of the men at the table. “And Isaac Prince told him, ‘Never let it be said we left a man naked, like some we know have done.’”

  The first man laughed at this, and there were any number of reactions round the long table. Parson Leach made a face that a parent might make at a child who behaves foolishly.

  “How do you think it will fall out down there?” wondered another man aloud.

  “I always thought the Barrows had more claim than Knox and those among them. It’s not old Tory land, but Indian deeds, though mixed up with one another, one deed contradicting the next, to keep the courts busy for years.”

  “But they do lay claim, and Prince was served a formal writ, though he tore it up and says he’s never seen it”

  “Do they know down in Wiscasset that it was Prince?” wondered Parson Leach.

  “They all blackened their faces,” said the first man sitting at the table, “but Jemmy Bligh came in this morning and said that Trueman recognized Isaac’s voice and could place a dozen others.”

  Peter listened to this conversation and it was not long before he was able to piece together the story that these men were so anxious to tell Parson Leach, and the reason for such a crowd hanging about the tavern.

  First of all, he understood that White Indians had been abroad in the settlement of New Milford; White Indians was the epithet given to any group of settlers ganging together to raise each other’s ire against the Proprietors who claimed great tracts and miles of land based on the grants of King Georg
e and his antecedents, or in the light of Indian deeds. The latter, it had been argued, might be considered null with every other agreement with the Indians, and to be reneged upon; the former declared void since King George and all his rule and law had been driven out of the country these eighteen years past.

  The White Indians were not always content to fan each other’s anger with talk and rum, however, and if any of the proprietors or their agents were more active than usual in pursuit of their suits, violence was almost sure to erupt. One John Trueman, as the story was told, had discovered this truth the hard way, and upon serving a writ of summons to Isaac Prince in New Milford, he was stripped, beaten, and sent home for his troubles.

  All about the surrounding countryside–miles beyond the limits of New Milford–in tavern and meeting house, church and den, there would be men and women gathered to discuss the meaning of this new instance of revolt.

  More details of the incident were laid out, till Parson Leach leaned back and said, “You know a lot about the whole business. There weren’t some of you boys among them were there?”

  “No, no,” said one, clearly troubled by the notion.

  “Upon my word!” said another.

  “There ain’t none of us been to New Milford for a thing, Mr. Leach, and that’s the God’s honest truth. But Nathan Barrow came last night and told us all about it.”

  “Barrow!” said Parson Leach. “What’s Barrow to do with it all?”

  “He drove them to it, if you believe the man,” said someone.

  “Do you think?” said the preacher dryly, for obviously he could easily imagine it. “Is he still hereabouts?”

  “He’s in the kitchen,” said Peter.

  Parson Leach looked surprised. “Do you know the man, Peter?”

  “Not at all,” said Peter, and glad to deny it. He recalled what Barrow had said about sinners in Sheepscott Great Pond. “Mr. Tillage just introduced him to me.”